Share your turkey cooking stories...

17 years ago

Good...Bad...Happy...Sad...Crazy...Horrible...

I don't really have any to share other then the first time I ever cooked a turkey was my first year flying and being away from on Thanksgiving for the first time...My roomie and I were on duty but didn't get called that day...we had bought a small turkey just in case so we got on the phone and rounded up some other wayward Flight Attendants that didn't have anywhere to go...My roommate was dumber then dirt when it came to cooking and I was right behind her...I called my Mom and got most of the particulars down...Put that baby in the oven...ohhh it's looking sooooo good...

I called her later on and asked how to make gravy...she started talking about the "Giblet Bag"...I'm asking her "WHAT GIBLET BAG"???...Yeppers I cooked the turkey with the giblet bag in it...

Now everytime I get that Tom ready to cook it reminds me of the first time we cooked one...We laugh about it now and I've already called my old roomie this morning to tell her to make sure she takes out the giblet bag...We had another good laugh...

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Comments (19)

jannie
17 years ago
Last yerar we went to my sister-in-laws. BIL was making giblet gravy,he decided to strain out the giblets. Poured all the turkey gravy down the sink. He raced out to the store for canned gravy. My Mom chops the giblets and adds them to the gravy. DH likes to boil the turkey livers and have them as a snack. The dog gets the other organs.
heather_on
17 years ago
Liz I'm glad I wasn't the only one that wasn't aware that a giblet bag existed!
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Nita__AZ
17 years ago
I can't think of any funny stories from my kitchen at Thanksgiving. A friend of mine and her husband were invited over to an elderly couples house for Thanksgiving. They went to get the bird out of the oven and discovered that they hadn't turned it on. At least there was plenty of vegetables and desserts for dinner. Now she calls them and reminds them to turn on the bird.
Jodi_SoCal
17 years ago
Our first year of marriage... Liz, substitute my MIL for your mom. In my kitchen instead of on the phone (which makes it worse, trust me) and we have the exact same story. I can still hear her going on and on about it, shaking her head. That was 35 years ago.

Jodi-
liz
Original Author
17 years ago
OHH Jodi...you poor thing!! Yes the MIL in your kitchen woulda been a whole lot worse...
lydia1959
17 years ago
I've never made a mistake while cooking a turkey, nope.. not me. lol But DH and his brother were frying one at my SIL's new house in her new pristine garage (you see where this is going?).. obsessive SIL had to wash the turkey really good before bringing it out.. but forgot to dry the turkey. Water and oil do not mix..it spewed everywhere and they ended up getting oil all over the garage. They were lucky not to have burnt themselves. This was 10 years ago and I'm pretty sure her garage floor is still stained.

SIL has never had Thanksgiving at her house since.
junkyardgirl
17 years ago
I've only ever had to cook the turkey twice, and it turned out perfect both times. I did, however, have country cured ham for Christmas dinner once, and forgot to soak it. It was so salty! I was terribly embarrassed.
dotmom
17 years ago
The first turkey I made, I read the instructions that came with the bird, Except I mistook what is said what the internal temp for the oven temp. My DSIL (an excellent cook) was the first to arrive about 1 hr before dinner time, She peeked in the oven and that bird was still so white. She cranked that oven up way high and the bird was done almost on time. Dottie
cynic
17 years ago
The first, well only time I had the "whole family" over was shortly after I bought my house. It was a last second thing and I went out the day before to get the turkey and groceries. I didn't think about THAWING time! LOL But I was lucky. The store I went to had "fresh" turkeys, and they weren't frozen so I didn't realize until much later that I really lucked out there. And I decided to borrow my late mother's electric roaster since that's how I knew of cooking turkey for my entire life. And hey, SHE wasn't using it! LOL Plus it was memories and she hadn't been gone for too long at that point, plus I knew it'd be good and I'd have the ovens for other things. Well I KNEW about the giblet bag, but danged if I could find it! So I just went on and figured it didn't have one. Shudda knowed, huh? So while I'm carving, guess what I find? OK, no big deal to me, so I tossed it aside and kepta cuttin', but it was a big deal to my "critical cousin". She loves telling that story to everyone she can, even to this day. Course when I hear about it I ask if she told them about the time she cooked the ham.... IN THE PLASTIC??? Even I'M not THAT stoopid!

BTW, people sure scarfed down that turkey (there wasn't much left!) so it must have been pretty darn good, and it was if I do say so myself. Several ate before they came over but still went for seconds, after a little taste.... "well we're not really hungry..." And technically my dad gave me the roaster. OK, I really kind of wanted it anyway. But my sister wanted to "borrow" it from me shortly after since my turkey was so good. Care to guess whether I ever got it back???

It just struck me that my critical cousin bought an electric roaster not too long after I had them here! Geez, guess it really must have been bad, didn't it? :D
junkyardgirl
17 years ago
My neighbor in SC burned down his trailer trying to fry a turkey. Not funny at all, really sad. They stayed with me for two weeks until their brother let them come stay there. Seems the brother had in-laws staying with him. Since my neighbor was bringing the turkey, there was no turkey at that table. The MIL had to be nasty and say "Well, if Tommy hadn't burned the house down, we'd be eating turkey now". How insensitive can you get?
liz
Original Author
17 years ago
OMG Junkyard...what a horrible thing to say to someone after they've just lost their entire home...and I can so relate to the salty ham...MIL sent us a Virginia Ham for Christmas one time and it was so salty I practically boiled the thing away!!

Cynic...next time your cous brings it up you could always say..."Well I may have been stupid about the giblet bag...but you're ugly...I can fix stupid...What can you do about ugly? LOL...

My turkey was great!! DH cut the thing down to the bone...and after dinner I started picking at the rest...I made a huge pan of rice,...then picked all the remaining meat off the turkey and dumped that and some of the broth in the rice and added two cans of green beans and that will be put on the doggie food over the next few days...i added two heaping tablespoons to their dry food...mixed it up and they are in heaven...Rice is good for them and they loved the turkey...but did they stop there??? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!...I came downstairs from folding clothes and these three DOGS had figured out how to open the trash can and had the remains of the carcus and trash thrown EVERYWHERE...needless to say they got tossed outside and I hope to gosh I'm not having to make a trip to the emergency vet tonight...We left them outside for about an hour and now have them locked down here in the basement with me where the doggie door is in case they get sick...They all three got a big ole swat on the butt with a newspaper and they knew I was mad...little stinkers...

I hope everyone's Turkey Day was wonderful!! We have lots of leftovers for the next couple days and I'm thrilled with that idea!!
caflowerluver
17 years ago
Really blew it this time! I wanted to do something different so I decided we would cook it on the grill rotisserie. It was looking perfect golden brown 15 minutes before the time was up. Then we went to get it and it was a blackened carcass! It had a very shallow drip pan underneath and the only thing we can think of is that it must have had one H3!! of a flare up! We got enough for tonight after scraping away the first layer.

I am so glad we didn't have company over, what a disaster that would have been. Elvira, mini Dachshund, didn't mind the burnt parts. Good for the lining of your stomach as my Mom use to say. DH said the Thanksgiving gods were punishing me because I strayed from the traditional. A funny story for the future.
Clare
msmarion
17 years ago
Years ago just before my Dad was getting married again he had the idea I should cook dinner for his fiance, her DS and DIL, who I'd never met before. He did all the shopping and brought home a turkey and all the fixings. Well I'd been cooking since I was 12 so no big deal. Well I must have stuffed that bird so tight that the thing didn't want to cook. He was convinced that the foil was on the wrong side or something. I was so stressed out by the time that bird came out of the oven I couldn't eat. I don't remember anything else about that day, but I never cooked for them again!! LOL

Man that bird took for ever to cook!! It was one of those funny stories he like to tell for years. LOL
sheilajoyce_gw
17 years ago
I was 13, and my mother had died in July. We were doing our best to keep house, and now my siblings and I faced our first Thanksgiving dinner. Lo and behold, we did quite well. My older sister knew how to bake pies from watching mom. I knew how to do the dressing and the turkey from watching mom, and my younger sister knew how to do another part of the meal, and each of us knew how to do a part that the others did not. It turned out to be a good meal that we served our dad, brother and ourselves. We were pleasantly surprised.
ntt_hou
17 years ago
We usually have Thanksgiving at my sister's house. She would take care of the turkey and dessert and I'd do all the side dishes. One year she couldn't do it, so I volunteered to do it at my house, turkey and all, the whole feast.

To save time, I purchased 2 frozen pre-cooked turkeys. My friends at work advised me to purchase them early and thawed in the fridge, so I did.

That year, I had a new fridge too. It was only 1 month old and I sure didn't know much about it.

Ok, back to the turkeys... I ran out of space on the upper shelves of the fridge so I threw 1 in the bottom drawer for the meat thinking that would be a perfect place for it.

Come Thanksgiving morning, I took the turkeys out, I freaked out, 1 turkey was thawed and 1 was still... frozen! I sure didn't know that the temp for that drawer, when set on high, was at 32F degrees! So, I thought that if I cook as directed but a little longer, eventually the frozen one will be thawed out. Well?... wrong assumption!

We ended up having to cut the turkey in pieces in order to fit it in the microwave to speed up the warming process. Fortunately, that works 'cause the turkey was precooked(luck #1).

I had a very talented cousin that came that day. She volunteered to take care of that frozen turkey. After microwaved it, she put the pieces together on the plate so nicely, the turkey look whole in 1 piece! It was amazing, I couldn't figured out which turkey was whole and which was not. (luck #2) LOL...

A few years later, that microwave died. When it came to purchase a new one, LOL... you bet, I remembered of the turkey incident and got a bigger size that fit my budget.

I still haven't cook a fresh turkey from scratch but I'm wondering.... what else could happen....
pattico_gw
17 years ago
Well it's not a cooking story....

We are having another Thanksgiving here today....

At 4:30am my eyes popped open as the thought hit me...."Yikes....we didn't thaw out the Turkey..."....So I jumped up and put it in water...I keep changing the water to keep it lukewarm. and I'm HOPING it thaws real quick.

patti
acey
17 years ago
well, ntt hou, here's what else could happen....

My Mom was getting remarried, and I was already grown. She still had young bride jitters at serving Thanksgiving to her soon- to- be in laws.

Oh she made sure the giblet bag was out of the turkey, and she rinsed the bird thoroughly, just as she had many, many times in the past.

Her almost father-in-law (soon family patriarch), was in charge of carving the bird. He assumed the proper stance at the head of the table, and first reached in with the big spoon to remove the stuffing.

She was mortified when along with the stuffing, out came an unraveling roll of paper toweling that she had used to dry the inside of the bird!!!!

We still laugh about that one!!!
Linda Wayman
17 years ago
I told this one last year and y'all didn't expel me, so I'll repeat it for all the world to see.

I had just turned 18 the first part of that November and had been married 6 months. I volunteered to cook dinner for my dh, my grandfather, my two brothers and my MIL.
I did not know about the bag inside the turkey or the neckbone in there either.
After I cooked the turkey, which did turned out pretty good, I sliced the meat because our room was limited and it was more practical to do it that way. That's when I found that bag and when that neck bone came out I was mortified. I thought it was the turkey's um, well, his penis. I hollered real loud. My dh came to see what the problem and I told him the turkey had an erection when it was killed and I cooked his penis, then I touched it. He fell to the floor laughing at me and told everyone what I said. I was so embarassed. We've been divorced for a lot of years now, but are still friends. Sometimes he calls on Thanksgiving to wish our household a happy day. He never brings that up. I wonder if he's forgotten or is afraid I'll start crying if he says anything. If I do start crying it will be from laughing about it. LOL!!!

Linda
pattico_gw
17 years ago
I've got to add to my turkey cooking problem...(forgetting to thaw...) Got it in the oven...

An hour later I was putting in some Wild Rice casserol...the oven wasn't even warm...

I wondered why the light was flashing...I even ask Denny about it. It's never done that before...so I don't know what I did...but the oven hadn't turned on. '

We'll be okay...I'm cooking it in a bag and they cook faster that way...It might just delay our eating about 20 mins.

patti

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