Butter and Bread and Sandwiches Oh My! (II)

[Poppy]

Our bird is 12.5 lbs.
Maybe it won't fit.

 

[kerneldrop]

Our bird is 12.5 lbs.
Maybe it won't fit.

Just depends on the pot. We've fried 15lbs before.
12.5lbs will be fine.
Just make sure it's room temp before frying...otherwise the breast will take even longer to cook and the rest of the bird will be overcooked.

For the past few years I've only been frying the breast.

 

[bykfixer]

My grandmother always cooked the turkey upside down. Dark meat up, white meat down. Leaving down in a pan instead of up on a pan like like you would a ham. Turns out about as juicy as a chicken breast, which aint real juicy either.

My pop would spend a while sharpening his carving knife the night before and man he could do slices just like a pro. One year he passed the torch to me. We've had random sized mangled slices ever since. 🥴

I use a ceramic knife these days and manage to end up doing a better job with that one, but still a far cry from the crafted looking slices my pop could produce.

 

[knucklegary]

Problem I find with birds under 12-15lbs They're mostly all bone.
Weber BBQ smoked is tasty, weather permitting.

 

[Poppy]

My grandmother always cooked the turkey upside down. Dark meat up, white meat down. Leaving down in a pan instead of up on a pan like like you would a ham. Turns out about as juicy as a chicken breast, which aint real juicy either.

My pop would spend a while sharpening his carving knife the night before and man he could do slices just like a pro. One year he passed the torch to me. We've had random sized mangled slices ever since. 🥴

I use a ceramic knife these days and manage to end up doing a better job with that one, but still a far cry from the crafted looking slices my pop could produce.

Sometimes I cut the breast off of the carcass and then slice it up. I have a nicely sharpened slicing knife that I use. I have been known to use my chef's knife. I keep that pretty sharp too.

 

[bykfixer]

My pop had a carving knife. I remember one year at my grandmas my uncle whipped out an electric knife. My pop laughed and said "you do it then"...
i don't recall seeing the electric knife after that year.

 

[kerneldrop]

I use a Honesuki to remove the cooked breast from the bone then I slice the turkey breast with an electric serrated knife. Terrible I know, but it gets through the crunchy skin better than anything else I have.

 

[bykfixer]

Every year my sister and her group (that live far away from me) show on fakebook this gigantic mess of dishes to clean up on thanksgiving day.
I show a photo of my kitchen already cleaned up. We clean as we go and re-use pots n pans instead of dirtying up everything in a kitchen cabinets. Example, the same pot boils the eggs for deviled eggs, then boils the noodles for mac n cheese then while that cooks in the oven (after the bird) boil potatoes for mashed potatos. When the meal is over there are very few dishes to wash.

Even my mother n law was impressed the first time it took place at my house. She said "need some help with the dishes?" I said "what dishes?"

Come meal time these will be put away already along with nearly everything else.

 

[kerneldrop]

fried breast…the dark is from the spices

 

[ledbetter]

My Southern friend call this recipe “Not your Northerner’s cornbread” It’s very moist.

 

[bykfixer]

After reading how some folks rip breast meat off the carcass then slice it I tried it. But decided to use a "pulled" method of slicing up the bird this year.

 

[Poppy]

I injected the turkey with a complex lemon juice marinade, and deep fried it at a friend's house. I'm glad that he had experience and inserted it slowly into the fryer.

At any rate, we had a great time, and my kids did most of the cooking. We also cleaned up as we went, and re-used pots. There was so much, in the way of leftovers, that my daughter spent a fair amount of time splitting them up into different containers, for us, and for my son to take home.

Here's a picture of Poppy's plate.
That black looking thing is cranberry sauce.

 

[JimIslander]

 

[Poppy]

Jim,
It looks like you had quite the place setting! The legs in the picture are too big to be squirrel, so I am guessing that they are Turkey.

I am sure that preparing all that food was in part because that you love the participants. I hope you had a great day.
Poppy

 

[hsa]

😍^

 

[JimIslander]

Jim,
It looks like you had quite the place setting! The legs in the picture are too big to be squirrel, so I am guessing that they are Turkey.

I am sure that preparing all that food was in part because that you love the participants. I hope you had a great day.
Poppy

Piggyback deep dried chickens.

 

[kerneldrop]

We do the typical foods. What may be different than y’all up north is we do buttermilk cornbread dressing, candied sweet potatoes and dirty rice

Here’s the last turkey. This was one is mild. The spiced up turkeys come out much darker

 

[JimIslander]

We do the typical foods. What may be different than y’all up north is we do buttermilk cornbread dressing, candied sweet potatoes and dirty rice

Here’s the last turkey. This was one is mild. The spiced up turkeys come out much darker
View attachment 35259

Nice bird, but you are braver than me. Rain or not, no way I would deep fry in a building unless it was metal with 16 foot ceilings.

 

[kerneldrop]

@JimIslander
That’s not my garage. It is detached and away.
I probably wouldn’t fry in my garage either.
I will say that in 30 years of frying turkey we’ve never had an issue like those you see online. But our birds dry out in a fridge for a week, we keep the birds under 10lbs, bring them to room temp and don’t use excess oil. Maybe that raises the safety level, I dunno.

 

[bykfixer]

I injected the turkey with a complex lemon juice marinade, and deep fried it at a friend's house. I'm glad that he had experience and inserted it slowly into the fryer.

At any rate, we had a great time, and my kids did most of the cooking. We also cleaned up as we went, and re-used pots. There was so much, in the way of leftovers, that my daughter spent a fair amount of time splitting them up into different containers, for us, and for my son to take home.

Here's a picture of Poppy's plate.
That black looking thing is cranberry sauce.

View attachment 35242

Cranberry sauce stopped showing up at our gathering when my pop passed away. He was the last hold out in our fam-damily. As a kid there were enough people that liked it to eat 3 cans of it. But between death and divorce that trend slowly disappeared. One year we found a can in the cabinet that was expired a few years.

Strange how it works at our gathering these days. No pumpkin pie, no pecan pie, no cranberry sauce, no carrots, no brown gravy. Most of the folks at our gathering don't even know those were once the staples of a traditional thanksgiving meal. These days it's macaroni and cheese, brownies, m&m's, that sort of thing. I don't choose what is on the menu, Mrs Fixer does. I just cook it.

Each year I change up how that's done a little bit. This years mac n cheese for example had parmegon sprinkled on the top and the deviled eggs were more salty than mustard-y (if that's a word). The butter beans were meat-free with a black pepper theme and the turkey was dipped in butter instead of gravy. Mashed pototoes were baby reds this year.

For me, I'm down with the butter beans and deviled eggs. They can eat everything else. I take leftover turkey, chop it up fine and make a turkey salad sandwich the next day.