When Cooking for Thanksgiving, Always Have a Backup Plan

In a world covered in coronavirus, I’d like to say I’ve used my time wisely. I opened the YouTube app and took to the culinary arts faster than you could say, "set it and forget it." I used my brother’s Amazon account and purchased every utensil you could possibly need. 

In the age of information, I have all my boxes checked in seconds. Food ordered for pickup, appliances purchased with Prime two-day shipping, and every popular YouTube channel loaded and ready to go. Bing, bang, boom.

The speed of having everything didn’t just alter my bank account, but my very state of mind. It was too fast, and like a culinary Icarus, I flew too close to the oven. Thanksgiving turkey is a delicate game of taste. I was dazzled with options for flavoring: wet brining, dry brining, cast ironing. My goal was to combine ideas to make the perfect turkey. 

In this flurry of imagination, I committed the cardinal Thanksgiving sin: I left the turkey to thaw out in the open for more than 24 hours. By the time I’d gone back to reread the description of a perfectly-thawed turkey, it was too late. This cooking conquest was over before it started. The very bag the turkey was housed in blew up like a balloon. In as classy a description as I can write, the odor that bellowed from that bag – well, you can assume it was gobble game over. 

I had no other choice but to reach into the deepest part of the freezer and pull pork chops for as quick a sear as a man desperate to still impress could make.

Why did I tell you this dreary dramatization of Thanksgiving failure? Is the message to not take risks in the kitchen during the holidays? Nay, friends! I wish for you to take a massive risk, but also to have a plan: takeout. Should the foul frying finish in failure, have the restaurant down the street send their best before you end up beaten and busted.