Thanksgiving cooking could mean hours in the kitchen — and it can be stressful, managing timing or different dietary needs. Do you have menu questions? Or tips for pulling off a successful meal for family and friends? OPB “Superabundant” contributor and food writer Heather Arndt Anderson joins us to answer your questions.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Jenn Chávez: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Jenn Chávez. There’s a lot of ways to spend the holiday on Thursday. You can spend it in community service at a garden in solidarity with Native people like we just heard. You can spend it reflecting on gratitude. You can spend it with your family or, for those of us with family out of state, perhaps you’ve been to a “friendsgiving” or two.
No matter how you observe the day, a common denominator is often food – a big table full of it. But the magnificent spread you might be imagining now doesn’t magically materialize out of nowhere. It takes planning, it takes skill, it takes hours, and it sometimes takes blood, sweat and tears. Luckily, we have an expert here with us today to help answer your questions about what it takes to prepare a holiday meal. Heather Arndt Anderson is with us. She’s a culinary historian, a food writer, and a contributor to OPB’s “Superabundant” series. And she is answering your cooking questions right now at 1-888-665-5865. Heather Arndt Anderson, welcome to Think Out Loud.
Heather Arndt Anderson: Hi! Thank you. It’s funny when you said “blood, sweat and tears,” I was looking at my poor little fingertip that I sliced a week ago when I was cutting scallions a little too quickly with a dull knife.
Chávez: Oh, my gosh. Well, folks, I did not know that before I said that, but I’m glad your finger is healing. I’m going to start us right off with a voicemail we got from Margaret in Portland, because many people called us to leave voicemails about their holiday cooking questions or tips. And you, out there, can call us right now, at 1-888-665-5865. I’m going to say that number a million times until we all memorize it. But without further ado here’s Margaret.
Margaret: I’m calling in about how I navigate Thanksgiving dinner with a family that has vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and meat eaters. It’s all in the prep. I actually start my prep two days before. I prep all my vegetables. They last in the refrigerator for two days, so everything can be thrown together on Thanksgiving morning and just cooked. And then we time the cooking of the meat and the vegan meal in the oven… can actually go on the same racks, be cooked at the same time, if they can be cooked at the same temperature. So I gauge what I’m cooking based on the temperature and the timing.
Chávez: Okay, that was Margaret in Portland. Heather, I really appreciate Margaret’s question because, full disclosure, I am vegan and I have to say I have been in environments before where the only option available for me was raw vegetable sticks. And I think we all want to do better for our guests than that, and obviously, Margaret is doing great. What are some things you can do to suit people’s different diets at a shared meal?
Arndt Anderson: I was a teenage vegetarian in the 1990’s and there were many holiday meals with my very meat-and-potatoes family where I had my little sad Morningstar Farms Chik patty and a can of mushroom gravy, because that was the only thing that I could bring. But we are very lucky in Oregon that two meat analogs are from here. The Tofurkey was invented here and then The Gardenburger, of course. But I would think of those as a last-resort kind of proteins.
I think that the best way to suit the dietary needs or restrictions of all of your guests, and have a side for the people who do eat meat, is to do a stuffed winter squash. You can do it with a kasha or farro. If you have people who can’t eat wheat, you can use brown rice or quinoa. But mix it with diced apples, dried fruit, nuts, if your guests can tolerate nuts. If you have a vegetarian but not a vegan, you can put a little bit of crumbled cheese on that. And then when you roast it, it’s going to come out so silky and so satisfying. And it’s a wonderful side dish, or a main dish for meatless people.
Chávez: Wonderful… squash, love it. So,Thanksgiving turkey, this is considered the main dish of this holiday. As you can imagine, I have zero idea how to cook a turkey. But even if I did eat meat, I think I’d still be pretty intimidated by the prospect. It seems like a whole affair. Patty in Tigard is better at it than me and left us this voicemail about turkey technique. Here’s Patty.
Patty: The very best advice I was ever given in terms of Thanksgiving turkey was to have it spatchcocked. The first year I did it myself. That was very difficult. But I’ve since found out that most grocery stores will spatchcock it for you. Once it’s spatchcocked, it means that all the meat gets done at the same time, so you don’t have dry breast meat while you’re trying to get the thighs done. It also means you can spread it out over the top of your stuffing and the stuffing gets this amazing, delicious juiciness from the meat of the turkey dripping into it. It’s absolutely the best advice I’ve ever been given and everybody who comes to my house for Thanksgiving “oooh’s and ahhh’s” over it. Have a great day. Thanks.
Chávez: That was Patty from. First, I want to acknowledge what a silly term “spatchcocking” is. And I’m wondering about your thoughts on spatchcocking, or other turkey cooking tips that you can share with us.
Arndt Anderson: I think that spatchcocking is a fantastic idea. It’s when you basically butterfly a bird. The easiest way is to use kitchen shears. You can just snip up along the backbone and then you kind of fold it open like a book ‒ the bird, that is ‒ so that its breasts are kind of in the middle and the legs are splayed out to the side.
I do think that, because a lot of modern commercial turkeys are bred for gigantic breast meats, you’re not always going to get things cooked at the same time. Dark meat is always going to withstand heat longer, and the breast meat can definitely get dry. So what I usually do is actually, a couple of days ahead, like our caller, I like to completely remove the breasts, tie them as roasts and then brine them separately. Then I cook the legs and wings separately. Usually I have a tub of duck fat that is just dedicated, it lives in my freezer the rest of the year. So I confit the dark meat, and you can do that days and days ahead of time and just crisp it up when you’re ready to serve. And then the breasts also roast much more quickly when they’re just a couple of pounds each. But then you can also control having different flavors. Maybe you want to have a maple glaze on one of the breasts and a chipotle on the other. You can be much more creative when you have the bird disassembled.
Chávez: Oh, interesting. Okay, I have another voicemail that I wanna play for us from Derek in Portland. Here is Derek’s tip.
Derek: The biggest tip I can give, which I got from my grandmother, is cook the day before. You can cook most of the things a day or two before, so that the day of, you’re just heating things up in the oven. And go for things that you can throw in a casserole dish, reheat. So that the day of, you don’t have to cook everything on the fly. Happy Thanksgiving everybody!
Chávez: That was Derek in Portland. And Heather, I think this is another very important aspect of cooking for a large gathering, which personally, I don’t know that I would do the best job at, but Derek has it handled. How do you manage this delicate dance of timing everything out to be ready at the same time?
Arndt Anderson: Derek is coming in with some wisdom because most of the foods that we associate with Thanksgiving are casserole kind of things that taste better the next day anyways. So yeah, having those ready ahead of time is a great idea. Again, when you disassemble your bird ahead of time, you can get it ready much, much earlier than the day of. You can even roast the carcass by itself and make stock, so you have all of your gravy and soup and everything ready to go.
The gameplan I usually come up with is that, because my son usually has no school the week of Thanksgiving, I’m often stuck with many days before the actual holiday. So I kind of parse things out and I can spread, not just the labor, but also the fun. You can definitely have a glass of wine while you’re snipping some green beans. It doesn’t matter if it’s Monday or Tuesday. You’re “working.” So, stretch it out. The labor can be joyful. That sounds very communist, but, if you enjoy cooking, you can stretch it out. It doesn’t have to all be a crunch.
Chávez: Okay. We have a caller on the line. Dylan is calling us from Newberg. Dylan, hello. Are you there?
Dylan: Hello? Yeah, I’m here. Thank you so much for taking my call.
Chávez: Yeah, absolutely. What’s your question?
Dylan: So, I just wanted to say, you know, first of all, Thanksgiving can be a very loaded topic for a lot of people. I think, first of all, it’s good to give thanks to the bird, because they have a hard life. I mean, let me tell you, if you’re cooking a turkey. But I wanted to also say, cooking for people, you know, it’s more than just feeding people. It’s a spiritual thing. It’s a spiritual practice. You’re putting the love that you feel in the food and it’s actually nourishing the people. You know, that’s spirituality. That’s ritual. You know, that’s, you know, offering your love to the people that you love and having it become something more than just what you’re doing, it’s who you are. And, I just wanted to highlight that aspect of cooking and say I love NPR, thank you so much for taking my call.
Chávez: Thank you so much, Dylan. I so appreciate that. And also, you know what Dylan says is right on. Like for you, Heather, what does the act of preparing food for others mean for you spiritually?
Arndt Anderson: I love this question and this way of intentional thinking around this meal. And I do, as a person who cooks pretty much every day, I try to treat the tasks as small spells that I’m casting, small love spells, my kitchen, which they’re small prayers. Everything has an opportunity to be sacred if you have space in your life to see it that way. And I know that sounds very woo-woo and very crunchy Portland lady. But, when I get my turkey every year, I try to make sure that I’m sourcing it from a small local farm so that I can assume or know that the bird walked around on the ground and didn’t live in a cage. And I spend a lot of time thinking about the lives of animals that are raised for food. I keep chickens in my backyard, and I was a vegetarian for 10 years, so it’s really hard for me to separate the spirituality from omnivory, I think. And when I’m at the table… A long, long time ago, I decided that I wanted to make my holiday meals friends and chosen guests, not just the people you’re born to. So, we go around and just say something that made us happy or made us laugh. Those are small ways of exploring gratitude in your life.
Chávez: What a good idea. We have another caller, Andrew is on the line from Milwaukie. Andrew, hello. Welcome to Think Out Loud.
Arndt Andrew: Thank you so much for taking my call. I wanted to talk about the possibility of sous vide-ing a turkey, because I just got a sous vide for my birthday last week, and I’ve been wanting one for a long time. I cooked some steaks over the weekend and it went really well, but I know that a turkey is a much larger task there, but I feel like conceptually it could really work because doing a water bath for probably an extended period of time for a larger animal like that. So, you know, I’m thinking six to eight hours at about 155 degrees, just get it up to temperature, get it really close to being done, and then when it’s time, just blasting it in a hot oven for like 550… 600 degrees, even if you can, and crisping that skin. But having that internal be already cooked. I just kind of want to get a second opinion on that. Am I way off target, or is that something that could work?
Arndt Anderson: You are 100% on target. And this is the only thing that my sous vide ever gets used for. You can make yogurt with your sous vide, too, you’ll learn all the joys of your new gadget. But, as long as you break the bird down – again, I’m going to keep talking about why it’s such a good idea. You can vacuum seal each breast separately, you can keep the legs and wings in their own bags with their own flavor, and you can just set it and forget it, and then just crisp everything up right before service, and it’s such a time saver. It is kind of a space hog if you have a smaller kitchen, having a big stock pot full of water circulating can be kind of a pill. But it’s a great tool if you have it.
Andrew: And also, you know, the nice thing about it… can I ask you a quick follow up?
Chávez: Sure. Yes, please do.
Andrew: I wanted to know if you would season it with anything besides salt and pepper in the bags. You know, maybe some aromatics but you know anything else? And then I just wanted to say, you know, the nice thing about the sous vide is it doesn’t have to be on a stove. So it could actually be out in your garage, plugged in and just chilling because it actually doesn’t need to be anywhere in the kitchen until you’re ready to cook.
Arndt Anderson: That’s a really good point. And I don’t know why it never occurred to me until you just... I’m going to move my set-up to the garage now, I think. You should absolutely season before you vacuum seal, because that’s going to be all of that time spent basically brining and marinating and soaking up flavor, and especially with the breast meat, which is pretty dense, the longer it can sit in a salty solution, the more of the seasoning is gonna osmos into the interior of the meat and become really seasoned.
Andrew: Thank you so much.
Chávez: Seth from Portland, they are on the line right now. Seth, hello. Welcome to Think Out Loud.
Seth: Hi, thanks for taking my call.
Chávez: What can we do for ya?
Seth: I get the sense that he knows a lot of really unusual...
Chávez: Seth, your line is breaking up just a little bit, and …
Seth: I...st…you…
Chávez: Seth, I’m so sorry. We’re not hearing your line clearly. But I do know from the person who answered your call that you are looking for a recommendation for a side for maybe more adventurous eaters. I personally live for sides, so I love this question. Heather, what would you recommend?
Arndt Anderson: Depends on what flavors you’re going with. This year I’m doing a nice seared escarole salad. So it’ll be cold, but it’ll have a nice little scorch to it, with persimmons and some smoked nuts. That’ll be one of the side dishes I’m going to do. I love sweet potatoes and anything that’s orange and starchy, but I’m gonna do a little pumpkin seed praline to go on instead of all the marshmallows. So, I would say don’t be afraid to step out of your own, not your comfort zone, but your own culture, culinarily. Like, if you grew up using just sage with turkey, try using spices from Mexico or Colombia. Try using Georgian spices. You can make an entire “traditional” Thanksgiving meal, but just all Japanese flavors, and it will be recognizable but different and unique, and yours.
Chávez: Awesome. Thank you so much, Seth. I’m sorry, we couldn’t hear your line very clearly, but we do appreciate you calling in. And we have another question from Erica in Portland who is on the line. Erica, welcome to Think Out Loud. Are you with us?
Erica: I am, hi.
Chávez: Hi. What can we do for you today?
Erica: Well, I recently became a mother of a third baby. He is now seven weeks old, and we don’t have any family living in the Portland area. And I really want to cherish and create a tradition of Thanksgiving and celebration for my children, that they will grow up remembering. And I’m curious if you have any thoughts on how that could be accomplished and managed with young kids, and doing it all on our own?
Arndt Anderson: Well, first off, I gotta say kudos.What you’re doing is so difficult and I know so many people who moved to Portland and started families and didn’t have anybody to celebrate holidays with. One of the things that really worked for them was joining a co-op daycare early on. Some of those are great, especially for people who are a little bit tighter on cash ‒ if you have a lot of kids or you’re a single parent ‒ because you work at the daycare once or twice a week. But, a lot of these folks that I know now, that my son grew up with, those kids have known each other their whole lives. They’re almost like cousins, even though a lot of them are only children or just don’t have any family nearby. And then, lots of shared meals and camping and stuff.
Another way to connect with people in your community is, if you have a chance to talk to your neighbors, and maybe just invite one person who you know lives alone over, and even if you can’t do a full Norman Rockwell spread, just introducing your kids to the idea that community can be found anywhere they look.
Erica: Thank you. That’s lovely.
Chávez: I love that too. Erica, thank you so much for calling in. We have another caller on the line. We have Dennis from St. John’s on the line. Dennis, hello, welcome to the show.
Dennis: Well, thank you for having me.
Chávez: What can we do for you?
Dennis: Well, I just want to kind of put a food earworm into people with root bakes. They’re seasonal, they’re reasonable. You can do a full root bake for under $10. Some red potatoes, babies are the best; quarter them, throw them in with some olive oil and just a little bit of garlic, maybe some salt and pepper. Cut up some parsnips. Parsnips are so overlooked, and they’re so good. I have to say it’s like a peppery carrot, but it’s larger so you can get a nice quarter out of it. I like to use golden beets with it, as well, and maybe some leeks… 350 …45 minutes, you’ve got a nice tender seasonal bake.
Arndt Anderson: I think that’s a great idea. It’s also a great way to disappear the weird if you have a CSA membership (Community Supported Agriculture) and you get that, like, rutabaga the size of your head. You can just turn it into nice little oven fries.
Dennis: Absolutely!
Arndt Anderson: One of the ways that my kid really likes roasted root vegetables is, I buy ranch powder. Not the little sachets. I buy the tubs of it, because you can put it on popcorn. But yeah, you can make a nice little powdery ranch,or use an onion soup mix on it. That’s delicious.
Dennis: If you want to get spicy, grab the Mrs. Dash’s Chipotle Mix, it’s nice. I’m on a sodium diet, I have to really be careful with it, so I love Mrs. Dash and all of its variations. The Chipotle is a really nice peppery kick.
Arndt Anderson: That sounds great. You can also make your own spice blends, and just keep them in a jar up in your cupboard. I do that sometimes.
Dennis: All right, well thank you so much.
Chávez: Dennis, thank you so much for calling, and we’ve got Annie from West Lynn on the line, and I think you have a question about sweet desserts. Annie, you are with us on Think Out Loud. Hello!
Annie: Thank you guys so much for taking my question. So, I’m going to be making my own pumpkin pie. I’m gonna be using an all-butter crust and then make the filling, and I’m wondering what concerns there are, what I should consider to make it the day before.
Arndt Anderson: Well, you can blind-bake the pie crust for sure, and you can make the custard ahead of time and just keep it in a tub in the fridge, or in a Tupperware. It’ll settle overnight because the eggs and the liquid and stuff will separate, but just give it a shake right in the jar or the container, and then you can pour it into your crust and bake a couple of hours before you’re expecting company, and then it’ll have time to cool. The house will still smell like fresh-baked pie, which is the whole point anyway, isn’t it? That’s why we like to bake on Thanksgiving, so everything smells good. You can also just form the dough and keep it in the fridge if you would really like to roll it out the day of.
Annie: Okay, perfect. Thank you so much.
Chávez: Thank you for calling, Annie, and the scent of pumpkin pie is now in my nostrils. Thank you for that as well. We have Kelsey on the line from Portland. Kelsey, hello, welcome to Think Out Loud.
Kelsey: Hi, thank you for taking my call.
Chávez: Absolutely. So what do you have for us?
Kelsey: I was just doing a contribution as a guest going to a large Thanksgiving dinner. My family this year is 26 of us, family and friends. And I’m kind of channeling Martha Stewart, where you show up with your flowers in a vase, you show up with your appetizers on a plate with napkins to go with it. But mostly it’s just so you’re not burdening the host of the party. And everybody contributes by saying… They don’t say, “Can I please use your oven? I need to warm this up,” or something. So I think carrying different dishes to what you’re assigned, and making it comparable to walking in the door and not being anything but festive is really the best part of our Thanksgiving.
Arndt Anderson: That is some real grownup behavior, and I want to see more of that. I still have friends who will put flowers in a paper bag, basically, and just show up, and you’re elbow deep in something in the kitchen and you have to find a place to put these flowers. So, showing up with everything already ready to go is such thoughtful, considerate, grownup behavior. Thank you for doing that.
Kelsey: Why, thank you…you tell my children to listen to that!
Chávez: Thank you so much, Kelsey. And you know, I agree… had Kelsey not asked that question, I had a question about, what can those of us who are not the primary cooks do to be the most helpful and least annoying to others?
Arndt Anderson: My biggest trick, and this is also like when you get to the point in the meal or the hangout where you just need to be alone for a minute but you don’t necessarily want to hog the bathroom, just go, do dishes. Go stand in there by yourself. If you don’t know where things go, that’s okay. Wash them by hand and just set them in the sink. It’s gonna be such a relief. The host will often say, “No, no, you don’t have to do anything, don’t,” but they’re not gonna stop you. That’s the single best way you can be helpful. Picking up plates off the table, and forks, just be a little bit of a waiter or waitress for your host.
Chávez: That is such great advice. I think we have time for at least one more question, and that is from Tara from Hood River. You are on the line. Hello, welcome to Think Out Loud.
Tara: Oh, thank you so much. So, my wife is vegetarian and we always have a vegetarian turkey, like a Quorn or something like that. And I was just wondering if there were ways to make that more palatable, more interesting, more flavorful, just to give her something just a little bit better.
Arndt Anderson: That’s really thoughtful and considerate of you. You could try… what is that word where you cut it open, cutting it open like a book, basically? Butterflying. And then you could smear some kind of nu- seasoned spread or some lovely spiced fruit mixture, and then roll it back up like a roulade and then tie it, and put a little glaze on the outside. It’ll still have a lovely presentation. It’ll have all this extra flavor that the fine folks at Quorn don’t think that vegetarians need, but in fact, do…
Chávez: We do need flavors. We do indeed.
Arndt Anderson: So, yeah, I would do that. Also, if you’re not afraid of using a little MSG, a lot of times the natural food brands stay away from it, but it’s perfectly harmless and it’s such an easy vegan way to bring umami and savory flavor.
Tara: Oh, that’s probably a better option than my usual umami flavor, which is anchovy.
Arndt Anderson: Okay. Oh, yeah. You can’t use anchovy!
Chávez: Well, thank you so much for your call and for your thoughtful question. And Heather, actually, I lied. I’m going to ask you one more question. It’s from someone who called but had to let us go because they were driving, but they asked for advice on spending Thanksgiving alone. Maybe you’re not going to a large gathering. What can you do on a solo Thanksgiving? And I’ve done that before too, so…
Arndt Anderson: I think that there’s a lot of opportunity for reflection when you have the gift of solitude. I think that it’s okay to still treat yourself kindly and do something nice. Have a little treat. A lot of times when I get my family out of the house for a couple of hours, I will just listen to Indigenous hip-hop really, really loud and just reflect on what it means to be an American these days and how we navigate this country’s history. And how we can bring that kind of mindfulness to what we eat.
Chávez: Thank you so much, Heather, and you’re amazing. I would not have been able to answer any of these questions. I am so grateful you were with us to do so. Thank you so much for being with us today!
Arndt Anderson: Thank you so much for having me. This was really… I was telling my colleagues that I’ve always wanted to have the Lynne Rossetto Kasper experience. And so, yes, my dream has come true today. Thank you.
Chávez: I love to hear it. Heather Arndt Anderson is a food writer, culinary historian, and contributor to OPB’s Superabundant. You can find more of OPB storytelling about the Northwest ingredients and love at opb.org/superabundant.
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