Wesley Morris Quotes

A week before Thanksgiving, my mother bought the turkey, frozen. Then she froze it some more. Then she let it thaw and cleaned it - and I mean really cleaned it, because nobody wanted a 'dirty bird.' She salt-and-peppered the turkey, buttered, paprika-ed, and nominally stuffed it.

Don't make a big to-do about the turkey; brine it, put it in the oven, and don't think about it again.

If you think about a Thanksgiving dinner, it's really like making a large chicken.

Most turkeys taste better the day after, my mother's tasted better the day before.

My mother very rarely skipped a Thanksgiving turkey. And yet, none of them ever tasted quite the same, landing somewhere on a sliding scale of succulence. She'd try new methods.

I always buy the smaller turkeys. On the pre-baste put pats of butter on the meat under the skin, put the skin back on, put a bunch of seasoning on the top, call it a day, put it in the oven. With a 10 - 12 pound turkey you are done in a couple of hours.

The most important thing with turkey is to let it rest - most people don't let it rest long enough. It will get juicier the longer you let it rest.

My favorite meal is turkey and mashed potatoes. I love Thanksgiving, it's just my favorite. I can have Thanksgiving all year round.

I love to cook a meal for the so-called holidays. You always need the turkey. I like making a good BBQ brisket as well.

You can't have a good Thanksgiving meal without a little bit of ketchup on the side.

No more turkey, but I'd like some more of the bread it ate.

Turkey is fine, but if I don't have the sides, forget about it. And cornbread stuffing is at the center of my plate. I will have about six sides and then a little bit of turkey and gravy.

Cooking turkey every year doesn't have to be monotonous - I want people to always mix it up using different spices and preparations.

That's the ultimate goal of most turkey recipes: to create a great skin and stuffing to hide the fact that turkey meat, in its cooked state, is dry and flavorless. Does it have to be that way? No. We just have to focus on what the turkey is and what the turkey needs.

Basting is evil. Basting does nothing for the meat. Why? Skin. Skin is designed to keep stuff out of the bird, so basting just lets heat out of the oven. That means the turkey will take longer to cook... so don't touch that door!

I've roasted a somewhat frozen turkey, and it's come out just fine.

I don't know anyone who hasn't overcooked at least one turkey, myself included. It's easy to do.

The turkey - my number one thing that people don't get is take that sucker out of the refrigerator about three hours before you plan on cooking it.

I have nothing against turkey. We eat turkey for Thanksgiving in my house.

Stuffing is my favorite food in the world! I actually have been known to go buy stuffing and make it in the middle of summer.

I think I'm going to give my baby her first food on Thanksgiving, make her some organic sweet potato. I'm very excited! It's going to be a big day and my husband is in charge of the turkey - he's the chef of the family!

If you really love stuffing, wait until the turkey comes out of the oven, add some of the pan drippings to the stuffing, and bake it in a dish. That's called dressing, and that's not evil - stuffing is, though.

I've always had fond memories of cooking Thanksgiving.

In deference to American traditions, my family put our oven to rare use at Thanksgiving during my childhood, with odd roast-turkey experiments involving sticky-rice stuffing or newfangled basting techniques that we read about in magazines.

Stuffing is evil. Stuffing adds mass, so it slows the cooking. That's evil because the longer the bird cooks, the drier it will be.