Saturday, October 17, 2009

THANKSGIVING TURKEY - Blackened Style


This was supposed to go on Facebook, but its 2211 characters long and they only give ya 420.




Due to popular demand, and extortion, plus the PROMISE of someone making cookies for a COOKIE EXCHANGE of all things, I am forced to tell about my incident with a Thanksgiving turkey 5 years ago.


So...I'm at Jeff's, little Kevin there and we are going to celebrate Thanksgiving. I've been making Thanksgiving dinners far longer than most of you have been alive which was one of the few meals that were ever successful, HOWEVER...blackened turkey was never a menu item.I prepare the turkey, the stuffing and put the extra stuffing into a dish and turned the oven on. I covered the turkey lightly on top with reynolds wrap. About 20 minutes later I begin to smell turkey..oh the aroma was lovely.


I did think wow that's pretty fast to be smelling turkey, but I've always cooked 20+ lb turkeys before. So I checked on that pup...er turkey. My goodness everything was browned up real nice! So i removed the reynolds wrap to let the breast catch up with the other parts. Soon thereafter I smell something burning! (Not unusual but kind of startled). I go back and open the oven and the whole dang turkey except the breast was black...blackened (to be culinary hip). I whipped that thing out of the oven....much chagrin.


Little voice saying, "Why is the smoke detector going off, Mimi?" Fortunately the breast was perfectly done, the extra pan of stuffing was fine (good since the stuffing INSIDE that turkey was not cooked at all). So we ate and gave thanks and a special thanks that any part of the turkey was edible. No potatoes though and no gravy.


Here's the deal which I found out later while cleaning off the stove/oven...EVIDENTLY I HAD COOKED THAT TURKEY on .......CLEAN! Don't ask me how I did that because I didn't lock that oven door like one should when cleaning an oven, but the dial deal was set to CLEAN.


So here's your recipe for a good turkey dinner. COOK ON CLEAN and your 10 lb turkey is ready in 25 minutes! I tried it later to cook a baked potato thinking it might take 2 minutes, but alas it didn't work.


THERE you brat friends of mine; it's done, it's told and NOW you can prepare for Thanksgiving AND make cookies for my cookie exchange!


P.S. The smoke detector going off was no big deal...that's just a part of my life. When I first moved to Jeff's we had that occur quite often...he would smile and say, "This is great, reminds me of growing up with you." HAHAAH I think he was the only kid who LOVED the cafeteria at college. One of his remarks about that was, "MA! They have all five food groups available at every meal AND everything is ready at once...no waiting for the baked potato an extra hour cuz you forgot to put it in the oven!" Ok I'm laughing... :)