As usual, it is Wrist to Forehead Sunday. It’s not that I want to add to the litany of griping about the cold, but… damn!
I am cooking the turkey I purchased yesterday, in order to run the oven and thus render my house warmer. It is working nicely and smells pretty good too. It was a bit of a process getting it into the oven, as often happens with me.
To begin with, of course I did not plan ahead and thaw the damn thing in the fridge for two or three days. I had it in cold water in my sink all yesterday afternoon and evening. I set the timer and was pretty vigilant about changing the water every half hour, so I felt safe in doing this. By ten o’clock, I thought the bird was on its way to thawdom, so put it in the fridge overnight.
This morning I discovered that it was no such thing. The center was still frozen. I still was not too worried, because yesterday, when I was consulting the marginally helpful Internet for thawing tips, I had discovered that it is not a bad thing to cook a turkey from frozen. Then I thought I had remembered that you aren’t really supposed to rinse the bird, as I have always done and indeed as the plastic wrap said to do. Back to the Internet.
OK, don’t thaw, but take the giblets and neck out. I know a friend of mine once left the giblets inside the bird, still in the little bag, because she didn’t stuff the bird and didn’t know about the giblets (it was her first turkey), so I was not too worried. But I thought the neck might better come out. It was frozen in there. Damn.
I’ll just add than when I search the Internet I usually go to a site called GoodSearch, www.goodsearch.com, because it seems they donate money to charity (should I have mentioned that when I first mentioned searching the Internet? Should I not already know that, seeing as I have been writing for many years? Oh, it IS Wrist to Forehead Sunday).
The sites I was directed to said it was OK to leave the giblets in, as long as they were not in a plastic bag. Well how was I supposed to know if they were in a plastic bag if they were still inside the turkey? Back to the bird. At last I found the giblets in the neck cavity (the irony is not lost on me that the giblets were in the neck end while the neck is stuck up the butt). Not a plastic bag, but I took them out and put them in the pan as I usually do.
I didn’t mind the neck still being in the bird, because I knew it wasn’t in a bag, but there was a plastic doodah I thought I should remove and that was stuck good. Consulting my Goodsearch sources, I was delighted to find a place where the question was not only asked, they referred to it as a “plastic thingy.” Unfortunately, the answers were contradictory.
At last I resorted to rinsing the damn turkey. After all, every other turkey I have ever cooked I have rinsed and I’m not dead of turkey poisoning yet. But how annoying, as rinsing the bird has always been my least favorite part of cooking a turkey (there is that bad moment when it feels like a body, which in fact it is, but I prefer to gloss over my own carnivorousness). And the neck still would not come out.
Finally I said to hell with it and put the turkey in the oven, which by now was plenty pre-heated (although some sources say that if you are cooking something for more than an hour you do not have to pre-heat the oven. I must say the last thing I felt like at that point was to write a blog post about the ordeal. However, that was three hours ago, and now that I have actually written the blog post, I feel much better about everything.
Mohawk Valley Girl 