A potato, a yam, and a sweet potato were sitting in a bar. The sweet potato said, I think I’ve had a few too many… better call me a Tuber….
Fozzie Bear: What is the potato’s least favorite day of the week? Fry-Day! I’ll be here all week. Photo from Pinterest.
Did you know that yams and sweet potatoes are not the same–oh you did? Did you know that potatoes and sweet potatoes are not the same species–oh you did? Ok, did you know that sweet potatoes sailed to Polynesia? Gotcha there.
Also, potatoes once made Queen Elizabeth ill. Yams, which are more clever, once ruled the world. And, since those bastard potato plants pretty much destroyed an entire country and created a big chunk of a new one, that makes the lowly potato pretty down powerful. Yep, I started poking around to find out why potatoes and sweet potatoes aren’t related and I found all sorts of interesting stuff. We’re goin’ in!
You can never have too much…. photo by kajmeister.
I was pondering when the first cook might have stuffed a turkey way back when… because there’s plenty of time to ponder these days, what with all of us being indoors and on our own so much of the time. Let’s not limit it to turkey, though. Who might have been the first person to stuff an animal, which is to say to take the innards out of an animal and replace it with other stuff, then cook it?
The noun form of “stuff” probably emerged from the verb “stuff” which came from the French otoffer meaning to cram things in other things. (See also “stop” and “plug” and suddenly I’m thinking about Drano.) Anyway, the noun “stuff” really does emerge from the verb, such that when we refer to “our stuff” or “bunch o’things” we mean bunch that could be crammed somewhere. When we are such “stuff” as dreams are made on, as Shakespeare’s Prospero said, he meant a motley bunch of craziness out of which we will go, after death, into some truer reality. This year certainly seems the “stuff” that dreams are made of, so I’m ready to decide we should cram 2020 somewhere else. I have suggestions about where, but you probably don’t want to hear them.
This raises a whole host of ancillary questions. What is the (brief) history of cooking stuffed things, i.e. what was stuffing about during the heyday of say Henry VIII? Compared with the 1950s, for example? Did the pilgrims stuff their turkey? (my guess is no, let’s find out). Why is it for some oddball reason called “dressing” in other places? And what are the weirdest things people want to do with their stuffing, (G-rated only, please)?
Holiday dinner 1965, photo by kajmeister’s Dad.
My mother knew how to cook one kick-ass turkey. She wasn’t the world’s greatest cook, but her stuffing and gravy were the best. Apparently, we also ate peas and carrots and Very White Mashed Potatoes on a very white tablecloth with white fine German china underneath. It was the Midwest in the 1960s, what can I say? That’s my uncle Delano on the right, named for FDR, before my uncle changed his name to Lamont then Lavont then Levitar, which was the eye in the pyramid. All that is another story. It was still good turkey.
Author’s Note: Today, in time for you to plan your Thanksgiving, I repost one of my most popular entries, the turkey preparation process flowchart, with some handy 2019 updates.
Perhaps someday I’ll write a book that is nothing but flow charts. They fascinate me! My Turkey Dinner flowchart encompasses everything you really need to know about preparing the meal from three days out, including a logarithmic scale. But, wait– I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s take this step by step.
You can start with a simple set of process steps, which I show below to use as a building block for what is to come. When I show you the full, unadultered version, your head will explode. Bear with me.
Turkey specific flowchart, by kajmeister.
Clearly, everyone has their own T-day traditions, whether it’s deep-frying the turkey (dangerous but popular) or serving crab (very San Francisco) or canned cranberries (really?). I will map out the standard meal with the basics: a stuffed turkey, gravy, and ancillaries to put the gravy on. Maybe a few vegetables, too.
In our house, we brine the turkey–which has its supporters and detractors I know–and we saute fresh green beans and mushrooms, rather than bake them in a soup. Plus deviled eggs because it’s not T-giving without deviled eggs. By the way, if you don’t waste spend loads of time watching cooking shows as I do, you should know that “sous chef” is short hand for all the prep work that you do which doesn’t involve heating or freezing the food–chopping, measuring, mixing, and making room in the trash and compost for all the potato peels, onion skins, and turkey liver. No, you don’t eat the liver. I don’t care what your grandmother did. Gizzard, neck, and heart, ok; liver, no.
