What's on your Thanksgiving Menu?

If I weren’t cooking I’d do this. Roast turkey appears frequently on Comal’s menu and it’s some of the best I’ve had. Great aroma from their wood oven.

https://comalberkeley.com/make-it-a-mexican-thanksgiving

I don’t know WHAT we’re having but here’s WHERE we’re having it.

Booked an airbnb for a few nights just about an hour from us. On a 10 acre horse farm in their motorhome :slight_smile: I’m thinking maybe foie gras and filet mignon. Or to be more traditional perhaps Stouffers turkey tettrazini. LOL. And carrots for the horses of course.

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I’m thinking of cooking my turkey directly on the oven rack, with a pan underneath to catch the drippings.

I mean, what could go wrong?

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If you’ve got a big enough pan, why not? And the shelf it’s on is going to be a mess but I kinda like the idea.

I don’t see the difference between that and using a rack in a pan, which would be easier to clean.

One of the people quoted in this article “is adamant that a turkey be cooked on a flat rack, not nestled inside in a roasting pan, to better circulate heat,” but I think you could get the same results with a convection fan.

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We do 2 Thanksgivings or so. 1 on Thursday with extended family; 1 on Friday with another group. On Friday, I’m serving:

a few delicacies and charcuterie (lonza, lomo, pate, prosciutto) to start

Porchetta roulade
Sunchoke-celeriac soup
Brussel sprouts with guanciale and black currant vinegar
Kabocha squash with Indonesian curry spice

Pumpkin pie with coffee ice cream
White sesame cake and black sesame ice cream

Calvados

and the next day, porchetta sandwiches ftmfw

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Totally fine to do this and I do this for roasts of various types on occasion.
I don’t mind washing the racks in the sink.
Sometimes the rack can get nasty. If you have it and are okay using the self-clean setting for your oven, clean up won’t be too bad. Rinse the oven rack off and put it in the oven for a self-clean cycle.

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Except for ovens with steam-cleaning (rare), using the self-cleaning cycle drastically shortens the lifespan of the circuitry.

After burning out two, we switched to a Wolf that has no electronics, just on/off switches for the fan and light.

We bought this recently and it has steam-clean in addition to ‘regular.’

True, which is why I mentioned someone needs to be comfortable driving their appliance harder than absolutely necessary.

I avoid the self-cleaning function as much as possible, but may use it once every two or three years.

Happy to be headed home for Thanksgiving this year, even though it will just be a small table of three. My mom is planning turkey thighs, hopefully stuffing of some sort (I’m the only real stuffing fan at the table), green bean casserole (also by my request :grin:), brussels sprouts, and butternut squash. Parsnip soup and relish tray to start, cranberry sauce and gravy to dress our plates. Pear and cranberry pie for dessert, wassail to drink if we’re not too sugared out. Usually we have Pennsylvania Dutch dried sweet corn, but my mom didn’t order it this year.

Thankful that my mom is hosting us “kids” with such a delicious feast. I fly home mid afternoon so I won’t be able to lend much of a hand in the kitchen this year.

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I’m making my friend’s mom’s green bean casserole since I was reminded that it was a lot better than the original Campbell’s recipe.

Kay Singleton’s green bean casserole

3 packages (10 oz. each) frozen French-style green beans, cooked
1 medium onion, diced
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup flour
2 cups milk
3/4 to 1 cup medium or sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1/8 tsp. Tabasco
2 tsp. soy sauce
1/2 tsp. salt
1 small can mushroom pieces
1 can sliced water chestnuts
almonds

Cook onion in butter. Add flour, stir, and cook about 1 minute. Add milk and make white sauce. Add remaining ingredients except almonds. Put in 2-quart pan, top with almonds, bake at 375 for 30 minutes or until brown on top.

I used fresh mushrooms instead of canned because she probably would have if they’d been available back in the day. I didn’t realize that the reason stores stock up on water chestnuts at Thanksgiving is for people who put them in dressing.

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Roast goose , traditional bread stuffing with sausage , roasted acorn squash , parker house rolls , mashed potatoes , cheese cake topped with blueberries. Pumpkin pie . And lots of wine :wine_glass:Cheers . Supposed to be crappy weather with snow. Yay

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We are doing our normal “go out for dim sum” Thanksgiving, with dim sum leftovers for dinner and a pumpkin pie made just so we can have it the morning after.

BUT.

I just found out that my neighbor cooks his turkeys - two of them - in his classic weber charcoal grill. And has done so for decades. Now I need to figure out how I can get an invite to that house!

Oh and I’m also making two of the Laurie Colwin cranberry Nantucket “pies” to give to a friend for her Thanksgiving meal.

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Forgot to mention that our first one, still going strong, has this feature and I’m guessing it must be at least seven or eight years old.

I’d have done the same with the mushrooms.

Where???

Next to that big mountain in Nor Cal.

I am looking forward to making Joel Rubuchon’s mashed potato recipe . Enough butter to stop your heart . Yum .

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I just looked at your forecast. “Haze”? Is that smoke from the Camp Fire?

I want to hear and see those potatoes if you make them!!!