The Raw and the Overcooked

Die Frau made a special mention that she followed the turkey recipe I gave her last year and had stellar results with it this Thanksgiving. Yay! It's a mighty fine recipe.

I wish I could say I followed the same one.

Upon watching "Dear Food Network Thanksgiving" with Alton Brown, we decided to go with his recipe. The husband loves anything from Uncle Alton. We cooked a fantastic prime rib at Christmas with him, and B often takes notes while watching Good Eats. The recipe looked good enough, so we decided to give it a try. And since we ti-voed (sp?) the show, we went back and forth many times to watch his trussing technique, gravy method, and beautiful, glorious looking turkey.

So imagine our surprise when all of our sides were ready to go on the table at 6:30 and our bird rested to a comfortable 164 degrees that we should cut into it and find a red bird. Raw, people. Raw! Everything went back in the oven. The father in law laughed over his vodka tonic, J nearly lost his shirt as he begged for more and more pumpkin muffins, and I went to the couch feeling dejected and confused. How could this happen? We did everything he said to do. Right?

Well, upon printing out a written recipe for the turkey, we found conflicting evidence. The written recipe says to take the bird out at 161 and let it rest to 165. The tv show said take it out at 151 and let it rest to 165. Easy to check, right? Well, we deleted the show after we jotted down the gravy recipe and put the turkey in the oven. And I can't find a copy of the episode anywhere on the food network website. I can find AB's Good Eats show where he makes a turkey, but there is no evidence of this show anywhere that I can find on the Internet.

So this is where I need your help, people! Did Alton Brown completely let us down and make a huge snafu on his show? Or did B and I incorrectly hear the directions after watching the show both separately and together at least 4 times? I'm dying to know, so if anybody has a copy of this show anywhere on their ti-vo, please help a girl out. Every review of this turkey was outstanding and it totally bummed me out that we screwed it up so badly. I mean, in hindsight, it makes no sense to take a bird out of the oven 15 degrees before it's ready, but we really thought we were doing what we were supposed to!

Needless to say, our raw turkey turned into an overcooked turkey even though it had a beautifully roasted skin. The garlic mashed potatoes became complete garlic after being warmed for an extra hour and a half. I thought they were at least tasty, but B didn't agree. The green beans were inedible. The stuffing was fine, however. And there was, of course, the small incident that involved a full Brita pitcher, a toddler, a cracked Brita pitcher, water all over the floor, and a fallen toddler with a bit tongue and lots of blood coming out of his mouth right before we sat down to dinner. All in all, it was a fabulous Thanksgiving!

To top it off, there was no pie, people! No pie! I will never ever, ever have a holiday that has no pie. I thought I was doing the sensible thing by not making a pie because there were only three of us and one guest would definitely not eat any and B would only eat a sliver. I don't care how pregnant you are; you just can't plan to eat a whole pie. I mean, if it happens, it happens, but you just can't go into making one knowing you are going to eat 9/10 of it. So I poached some pears in white wine and vanilla beans. They were actually quite delicious, but my final words to Brett as I went to bed that night were, "I really, really want pie." I do believe that pie would have made it all better.

It started out as a happy morning...

So to all of you coming to my house on Christmas. There will be cookies. There will be candy. There will be pie. Or some sort of gooey cake that will make it all okay just in case it all goes horribly, horribly wrong again!