Sam Sifton - Thanksgiving: how to cook it well

Copyright 2012 by Sam Sifton

Illustrations copyright 2012 by Sarah C. Rutherford

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R ANDOM H OUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sifton, Sam.
Thanksgiving: how to cook it well / Sam Sifton.
p. cm.

Summary: From one of Americas finest food writers, the former restaurant critic for The New York Times, comes a definitive, timeless guide to Thanksgiving dinnerpreparing it, surviving it, and pulling it off in style. From the planning of the meal to the washing of the last plate, Thanksgiving poses moreand more vexingproblems for the home cook than any other holiday. In this smartly written, beautifully illustrated, recipe-filled book, Sam Sifton, the Times s resident Thanksgiving expert, delivers a message of great comfort and solace: There is no need for fear. You can cook a great meal on Thanksgiving. You can have a great time. With simple, foolproof recipes for classic Thanksgiving staples, as well as new takes on old standbys, this book will show you that the fourth Thursday of November does not have to be a day of kitchen stress and family drama, of dry stuffing and sad, cratered pies. You can make a better turkey than anyone has ever served you in your life, and you can serve it with gravy that is not lumpy or bland but a salty balm, rich in flavor, that transforms all it touches. Here are recipes for exciting side dishes and robust pies and festive cocktails, instructions for setting the table and setting the mood, as well as cooking techniques and menu ideas that will serve you all year long, whenever you are throwing a big party. Written for novice and experienced cooks alike, Thanksgiving: How to Cook It Well is your guide to making Thanksgiving the best holiday of the year. It is not fantasy. If you prepare, it will happen. And this book will show you howProvided by publisher.

eISBN: 978-0-679-60514-0
1. Thanksgiving cooking. 2. Cooking, American. I. Title.
TX739.2.T45S54 2012
641.568dc23
2012013919

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Book design by Liz Cosgrove

v3.1

For my mom, who taught me to give thanks

T hanksgiving is not easy. The holiday is for many of us a day of travel, of traffic and stress. It is a day of hot ovens, increasingly drunk uncles and crowded dinner tables, of people arriving late or needing to leave early, of burned yams and spouses who forgot to buy the one thingthe one thing!you asked them not to forget to buy. Thanksgiving can be a hard day to manage. It takes strength.

The cooking can be difficult. (That turkey is so big, and your oven so small.) The interpersonal dynamics are often harder. [Cue tears.] Either you are traveling somewhere to be fed, or opening your home to people in order to feed them. This is not easy, ever. You may be putting feuds on hold or building bridges between clans. You may be sharing family traditions or creating them or fighting against them or all three at once.

I can help. I have spent the last 25 years cooking Thanksgivings in homes real and improvised. I have cooked with and for the family I was born into, for the ones I built with friends, for the families my parents married into after they ceased to be married to each other, and for the one I created with my wife and children. I have run Thanksgivings for two people and for dozens. I have seen a lot of birds.

For a couple of years I spent Thanksgiving Day at The New York Times , where I once was restaurant critic and now work as national editor, answering panicked questions from readers. I was a one-man Thanksgiving help line. The questions came fast and furious, in email messages sent from all over the country and from all over the world. I answered questions on the newspapers Web site about burning turkeys and still-frozen ones, bland gravies and last-minute cranberry sauces, too-thick corn puddings, underdone squash, what to do with someones vegan aunt or carnivorous boss.

Once, someone asked me how to cook bush meat. (Carefully.) Another time, someone wanted to know what to tell the cook running the tandoor oven near his home in Mumbai, since the guy had never before seen a turkey. (Tell him its a big chicken?) I consulted on failed pumpkin pies and epic turducken blunders. I worked the turkey-oven-temperature-time equation as if studying for a doctoral exam.

I saw the depths to which some cooks can fall during Thanksgiving, and I bore witness to the heights to which some cooks have risen.

And all along I asked questions of experts and tested their advice at home. I have brined turkeys and not brined them, smoked turkeys, fried turkeys, roasted them upside down, right side up, covered in butter-soaked cheesecloth, at high temperatures and at low. I have whipped potatoes and baked potatoes and applied marshmallows to yams, parboiled green beans and wok-fried Brussels sprouts. I have cut turkeys up to speed the cooking process. Ive made turkey mole. I have experimented in your name.

This book compiles all that I have learned. It is a primer. It should provide you with solace as you face the terrors of your first Thanksgiving or the boredom of your 26th. And it will, I hope, answer any and all questions you have about the day and its preparation, its beginnings, its middle, its end. Thanksgiving, after all, always brings questions, doubts, and emergencies. This book exists to answer and assuage them and, if necessary, to apply electric paddles to chests. It is a Thanksgiving ambulance in book form.

You can go your whole life and then wake up one morning and look in the refrigerator at this animal carcass the size of a toddler and think: I have to cook that today .

There is no need to worry. Thanksgiving does not have to be a drag. It does not have to involve dry turkey or scorched potatoes, chalky stuffing or a cousin in from Erie weeping in the hall. There is no need to argue. There is no need for fear. You can cook a great meal on Thanksgiving. You can have a great time.

This is my testimony: You can make a better turkey than anyone has ever served you in your life. You can serve it with dressing that will make your guests swoon.

You can make Brussels sprouts into something marvelous. They need not be mush, nor taste of soap. Your gravy can be a salty balm, rich in flavor, transforming all that it touches. You can have cranberry sauce that does not come out of a can; sweet potatoes free of marshmallows; butternut squash with maple and bacon, chipotle, and butter; mashed potatoes thick with cream. You can have crisp green beans, a beautiful pecan pie.

You can make all this and your family can gather in happiness around you to consume it. (And they can watch television while they wait. Yes, they can. Football is part of this holiday, too.) There can be a fire if you have the place for it, or just roaring conversation to warm the heart, as kids do jigsaw puzzles on the floor, if you dont.