Thanksgiving survival tips for the cooks: ‘You should be able to enjoy it’
Say it with us: Thanksgiving is supposed to be fun.
Of course, that can be hard to remember when you’re four hours into cooking, the kitchen is a mess and hungry guests have started to arrive.
“Everybody has high expectations, right? You don’t want to be the person who’s responsible for the mistakes,” says Phoebe Martinson of Phoebe’s Pastry Cafe in Olympia, which sold out orders of its pre-made Thanksgiving dinners this year. “It’s a lot of work — you have to shop, you have to plan, and then day-of there’s a lot of work.”
On the biggest cooking day of the year, local culinary pros offer some last-minute advice on how to keep your turkey moist, your guests happy and your sanity in check.
First up: Turkey.
“It’s hard to get it right, and it’s really easy to overcook it,” said Leanne Willard, director at Bayview School of Cooking, who recalls the time her mother let a frozen bird defrost in the family bathtub for a few days. (“No one got sick.”)
Justin Wells, chef and co-owner of La Petite Maison in Olympia, suggests taking it out of the oven when a thermometer registers about 150 degrees since it will keep cooking on the counter. And never trust the popper, which only goes off when the turkey is past done, he said.
Wells favors a high-heat approach to cooking a turkey followed by a long rest, maybe two hours, to let the juices redistribute and the protein fibers relax. He advises prioritizing the rest over having a piping hot turkey; you can always put it back in the oven for 10 minutes if it seems too cool.
La Petite Maison hosts a family-style Thanksgiving dinner. This year’s menu include butter poached heritage turkey, wild mushroom dressing and cranberry confit, with pumpkin soup and gougères to start and pot de crème with lemon sabayon for dessert.
At home, it’s a different story.
“I actually have a soft spot for canned cranberry sauce,” Wells admits. “But I think pumpkin pie is disgusting.”
Next up: Don’t forget to delegate. With a house full of people, delegating jobs like peeling the potatoes or stirring the gravy helps move things along and makes people feel included.
“It doesn’t have to be just one person. It can be, ‘You cut this, I’ll peel that,’” Martinson says.
At Karla Curry’s house, anyone who doesn’t help with the cooking has to help with the cleanup. Curry, who owns Occasions Catering with her husband, is accustomed to catering events for up to 400 people. Whenever she gets too worked up over a meal at home, her adult children put her in her place.
“They say, ‘It’s not an event,’” Curry says. “You should be able to enjoy it.”
Which brings us to our final lesson: Keep calm.
“I think people probably take on too much,” Willard says. “There’s always that feeling (when) people arrive, you almost feel like you’re going on stage. You feel like you’re in the performance where everything has to be perfect.”
Resist that urge, she says. Your family and friends didn’t come for an Instagram-worthy spread, they came for the company.
This story was originally published November 27, 2019 at 6:00 AM.
