I remember as a child my brother and I always complained about the turkey always being so dry, year after year after year lol. Every New Year’s Eve we had the same thing. And then I also remember my own disastrous attempt at cooking a turkey leaving the giblets inside the bird (they were in a plastic bag). I actually tasted a bit of the meat thinking I’d done so well before I realised.
What are you planning for your Christmas meal?
Fangs
#42
oh wow. never done that but came close in checking the cavities for the bagged crap they leave inside LOL
I think turkey is usually SO big ya know that cook time just makes it dry out. I know mom basted her turkey all the time but it made for good skin but never did nothing for the inside meat. I know I ate more of ‘the bottom of the turkey’ in the leg, wing, underside meat area, ‘the darker meat’ just cause it had more fat maybe? dry ol’ breast never interested me.
I made my little chicken last night for dinner and I kept ALL the fat dripping from that chicken to put on my leftover chicken breast I am gonna eat later today. OH MY GOSH I can’t wait to pour all that chick fat over that other chicken…I am all excited HA
Shinita
#43
Oh you remind me of the Christmas when I seriously contemplated a fasting day (because some people on this forum did just that if I remember correctly)… But it never happened. I need the cooperation of my body for EF and it always refuses me in the last years.
Of course I fast until the family Christmas dinner but that’s not usual. Especially now that dinner OMAD seems realistic. And that dinner isn’t big at all, we have a few dishes, typically too carby for me… One year there was plain meat. Chicken breast, just a few pieces and it was mostly for someone else. Yeah, I totally need to bring my pork chuck roast. Once I brought a big one, for everyone. They wasn’t so much interested but I know people are odd. And there are desserts, low-carb and high-carb ones alike.
I never knew how to talk about fasts without talking about food… Fasts are just the time between two (hopefully wonderful) meals and they easily affect the fast itself. Like I need a BIG meal before a longer fast.
Shinita
#44
I only heard about turkey becoming dry a few days ago… Maybe because I never roasted a whole one? I can’t even buy a whole turkey here, I buy pieces and they roast wonderfully, they are moist and everything. Roasting is super easy, I toss the meat into the oven and wait until it gets properly red/brown. Even leaner pork stays juicy…
I can’t cook meat only if it’s this simple, I never learned and I am glad that for carnivore I don’t even need… It would be nice to get crunchy chicken skin without getting it off from the meat first but I accepted it won’t ever be in my skillset, no problem, I don’t like chicken much and turkey has too thick skin for it to happen, probably. I usually lose my patience when it’s just a few tiny pieces of skin in the pan (and I never have more at once. maybe I should freeze it and collect more?), I rather make another roast and put the skin next to it.
I think turkey is borderline impossible to overcook but it might be just me 
I love well cooked food. I fry chicken liver for 30 mins (or bake for an hour) 
Overcooked isn’t something I can imagine, overfried or overbaked is when it’s charcoal (or dried out but maybe the pieces should be bigger then).
Beef is special, I don’t know why. Certain beef dishes need hours, sure but liver or just some fried beef cubes? Surprisingly little.
It can be, indeed. Sometimes beets are totally soil flavored, I don’t like that either but it’s not so horrible to me. But normally it’s not like that and they are pretty good (to me). With a ton of vinegar 
It was super hard for me to dislike a food that contained a huge amount of vinegar… I loved vinegar. And can’t eat it on carnivore as there are no dishes that calls for it… Maybe I would find some but it’s not that important anymore. I do eat mustard with my sausages so I actually consume vinegar but it’s still not the same that way.
Beets are borderline inedibly sweet for me now. A ton of vinegar still helps a lot but I eat other things now.
We never ate turkey. I remember one turkey drumstick at a festival as a kid. I probably had turkey 1-2 times in my first 40 years of life. But now I like to have it every month. I really like it. I would love to have 5kg boneless slabs of it 
Carnivore and pork roasts made me sooo lazy.
PaulL
(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing)
#45
It used to be a big problem in the U.S., as well, but selective breeding (the kind of genetic modification that doesn’t involve gene-splicing, lol!) has made a difference.
The reason that turkey is part of a traditional Thanksgiving meal in the U.S. is that it was supposedly part of the original meal that the Massachusetts Bay colonists shared with their native friends. The rest of the foods are probably not from that meal; they are rather the sorts of things that are available around harvest-time. For example, maize (which we call corn) was definitely part of the meal, but it’s never been traditional in my family, and succotash (one dish in which maize was sure to appear) is not popular at all in the U.S. anymore, so far as I can tell.
Alecmcq
(Alec)
#46
Wasn’t it Daffy Duck who said “suffering succotash”? Up until 2 minutes ago, I had no idea what he was talking about.
Alecmcq
(Alec)
#47
A well known problem…Our strategies:
- As small a bird as possible
- Cook the bird in a sealed cooking bag
- Put lots of butter all over the bird plus in the internal cavity
- Slightly undercook the bird, and eat the external parts first (I do the legs, wife likes the breast), and then re-cook the rest of the bird for leftovers.
Seems to work, we always have very succulent turkey. But how my wife eats the breast I never know… yuk!
islandlight
(Laurie)
#48
I remember long ago (before they had special cooking bags), a male neighbor telling my father that his secret to a moist turkey was cooking it in a paper bag.
Fangs
#49
my hubby just said, ol’ Southern boy he is, he wants succotash. I am like HUH? and he found some cans of it made by Margaret Holmes brand and is like haven’t had this since a kid. Yea STILL sitting in the pantry not eaten for like 3 mos. I said eat one of these cans please and he is like, nope, don’t want it today. Just a big sigh on the stupid of it all kinda with this when I open the pantry and think WHY bother HAHA
@Alecmcq
had to look that up. suffering succotash and it means squat. Just 2 words the ‘Looney Tune’ franchise put together to mean annoyance and surprise. Huh so simple yet SO darn catchy to alot of us HA
Mom in the old days never had ‘cook/seal bags’ but you are right. There is now tech available to cook better than how they had to oven it before for sure. Plus with the frying gadgets, like an air fryer or sous vide would it improve turkey to wonderful standards vs what most of us olders like me had to deal with on the table?