Lessons Learned from Friendsgiving

Mistakes, blunders, and surprises.

Last week I compiled some of my favorite Thanksgiving recipes here on NBD Fancy in the hopes that I could inspire some readers with their holiday menus.  I wanted everyone to know about the dishes that had brought me so much joy, satisfaction, and larger waistlines over the years.

After that article, I cooked several of the recipes for a Friendsgiving potluck, which was glorious and exciting but also full of blunders and mistakes.  It’s one thing to recommend dishes. It’s another to actually execute them consistently from year to year. The good news is that we learn and grow from our errors, right?? That’s why today I am reporting back with the most valuable takeaways from Friendsgiving 2022. I’m doing this to spread knowledge… but also to have a written record for when I inevitably forget all these lessons in two weeks.

Here are the most important things I’ve learned.

Lesson 1:  Turn on the oven.

This one seems like a real obvious building block for a successful Thanksgiving meal… or any meal in general.  I was therefore shocked when I neglected to turn on my oven not once, but twice in a single afternoon.  But I had an excuse.  The day before Friendsgiving I decided to be proactive and make pecan pie.  I had a two hour window before I needed to go off and play afternoon board games with my friend — seemed like a perfect amount of time!

Turns out I was incredibly naïve.  That’s because of Lesson 2.

Lesson 2:  Pecan Pie takes a little longer than you expect

Lesson 2a:  Especially if you don’t follow lesson 1 (turn on oven)

Let me address lesson 2, which in turn will illustrate lesson 1.

If you’re like me and plan to use John Besh’s pecan pie recipe (and you really, really should), then part of the process will involve boiling molasses, corn syrup and sugar together and then letting it come to room temperature.  This may be a wild statement, but turns out that bubbling, churning sugar sludge doesn’t cool down in five minutes.  Or ten minutes.  Or even thirty minutes. It took me nearly an hour to bring this mixture to room temperature (and I couldn’t put it in the fridge because there was a giant, raw turkey occupying all the free space).  Needless to say, this life lesson put me way behind schedule.  Board games, sadly, were sacrificed — as was my sanity.

Once I finally assembled my pies (I had made two – one for Friendsgiving, one for game night that evening.  And yes, game night was in addition to the afternoon gaming plans), I opened my preheated oven to discover it wasn’t preheated at all.  Despite me having literally turned the knob to 350 degrees, my diva oven had decided that it was in no mood to cooperate.  I blame the oven, of course, because it’s too devastating to acknowledge my own shortcomings as the operator.  Truth was that I needed to hold the dial a few seconds so the oven’s flame would ignite, and of course, since I had utterly failed to do that, there were no flames, and subsequently, no heat.

So, I restarted the oven all over again, and this time I made sure I saw blue flames flickering below the oven floor.  25 minutes later, my oven had reached 350 degrees, which meant my pies were ready to go in… but in the meantime I had actually made myself another batch of Pan Sushi Dynamite as a late lunch (this time with canned salmon, which was equally delicious and much cheaper than fresh salmon.  Lesson 3: canned salmon with Pan Sushi Dynamite totally works).  Before I put the pies in the preheated oven, I decided to broil my pan sushi real quickly (otherwise I’d have to wait a whole hour while the pies baked).  Five minutes later, I pulled the pan sushi out, switched the oven back to Bake, and slid the pecan pies in.  What could go wrong?

Forty five minutes passed, and as I was sprawled on the sofa in post-Pan Sushi Dynamite food coma, I realized that the normal, heavenly scent of pecan pie had not filled the household.  Strange.  Turns out that I had AGAIN been too hasty with my oven when switching back to the Bake function and had managed to turn the flame off.  As a result, my pies had been sitting in a decreasingly warm oven — sort of cooking, sort of devolving.  DISASTER. Lesson 3a: don’t make pan sushi while also making pecan pie.

And so there I was again, adding even more time to my already delayed pecan pie experience. Shocking that this could happen twice in the span of two hours, but also, knowing me, it’s not shocking at all.  At this point I started to worry that I wouldn’t be able finish the pies in time for game night (again, not to be confused with game afternoon); so, I set my oven to convection, which requires no preheating but feels scary for baking, and sent the pies on their merry way.

Some minutes later, my kitchen finally, happily filled with the intoxicating scent of fresh pecan pie.  AT LAST BACK ON TRACK!  It was only a matter of time before the pies would be out of the oven.  How much time though?

Lesson 4:  Set a timer

After all the chaos of the preheat disaster, I hadn’t actually set my timer.  This meant I had to go jiggle my pies every ten minutes for the next who-knows-how-long.  It was tedious and annoying. In the end, the pies still turned out great — maybe a little looser than normal — but no complaints.  Just lots of time wasted.  Check your oven, check your timers.  And speaking of checking on things…

Lesson 5:  Check your turkey 30 minutes before it’s due to be ready

This turkey is pretty...PRETTY DRY.

This is a classic rule, but it’s one I spurned because of random hubris.  My history with cooking turkeys and chickens is that they’re never ready on time.  So, this year, with my hulking 16 lb. bird, I didn’t bother checking the temp until three hours and a half into roasting, which was when the turkey was supposed to be done. Dumb.  The turkey, while a gorgeous shade of burnt sienna, had an internal temperature of about 200 degrees — far higher than the target of 165.  My oven, it turns out, is ferocious (when I remember to turn it on).  A beautiful turkey, beautifully dried out. There is a happy ending though: two days later, I roasted a second turkey, and it was ready — and perfect — at three hours, ten minutes.  Luckily I started checking at two hours, forty minutes; so I was able to ultimately pull the bird before it crossed into overcooked territory.  Check early and check often.

Second turkey, you say?

Lesson 6: Pre-Brine Is Fine

Let’s get into my turkey drama. On the Monday before Friendsgiving, I bought a frozen Butterball turkey.  Little did I realize that Butterballs are pre-brined, which meant my entire game plan was at risk! Would the turkey be too salty if I applied the dry-rub I was so excited to use?  And what if I reduced the salt in the rub — would the turkey be too bland if I overcompensated for the pre-brine?  I’m an overcompensator!  Between the pre-brine dilemma and the Butterball’s reluctance to thaw, I decided last minute to go to the store and buy a second turkey, this time unfrozen and untouched.

And so the turkey I made — or rather, submitted to the flames of hell — was this fancy non-Butterball bird, and guess what?  It was fine.  Despite having left the turkey in a dry sauna of despair, the meat was still flavorful. Had I actually paid more attention to the bird’s internal temperature, it would have been a knockout. But hey, that’s what gravy’s for, amiright?

Unfortunately, now I had a Butterball lurking in my household like Rochester’s wife in Jane Eyre (spoiler).  But unlike Rochester, I wasn’t going to chain this turkey to a bed in the attic (but I have since named it Bertha Antoinetta Mason).  As long as I had a random Butterball hanging out, I decided to test just how impactful a pre-brine could be. 

I dry-brined the now-thawed Bertha in exactly the same style as my first turkey, and then the next day, just before I sat down for a recording sesh of Watch What Crappens, I slid the Butterball into the oven and let it roast away.  (Lesson 7: Roasting turkey while podcasting is a surprisingly delightful multi-task)

Unfrozen organic turkey vs. a Butterball named Bertha.

After roasting and resting, it was time to finally try the Butterball.  I recruited my friend Judy to help with the tasting, just to make sure I had a witness.  Also, she’s super fun.  We dug in, bracing for a super salty turkey experience. Surely this would be inedible. The result?  It was divine.  Not only had the pre-brine not affected the recipe, but perhaps it had even enhanced it!  Both dark AND white meats were perfectly moist, and the flavor… the flavor was excellent!  No traces of over-salting whatsoever! We were blown away.  You guys, I think I’m Team Butterball!

Lesson 8:  Don’t forget the acid

Let’s talk about sides.  Amidst the turkey, the stuffing, the gravy, the sweet potatoes, and everything else at Thanksgiving, it’s essential to serve up some acidic notes.  We had several zingy dishes at the table, and they were all lifesavers:  Roasted Squash with Yogurt and Spiced Buttered Pistachios; Little Gems with Garlicky Lemon and Pistachio (a.k.a. THE Salad); Whole Roasted Carrots with Sweet and Sour Dressing; and Charred Cabbage with Salty Peanuts & Nuoc Cham.  I highly recommend any of the four recipes, but even if you do your own thing, just make sure you have at least one veggie at the table that uses lots of vinegar, lemon, or yogurt.

Lesson 9: Maybe don’t use so much bread in the stuffing

I made Kenji López-Alt’s stuffing again for Friendsgiving, and I must admit it felt a little too bready this time around.  Going forward I’ll reduce the amount of bread in the recipe from 2.5 lbs down to 2lbs, which has the benefit of a) increasing the ratio of wet to dry, and b) eliminating the need to buy so many loaves.  If you like your stuffing to be bready, then don’t change a thing.  But I’m going to experiment with this a little.

Lesson 10:  Go hard with the char

I recommended Molly Baz’s Blistered Broccolini with Charred Dates, Lemons, and Sesame last week for a Thanksgiving spread, and now I must make an addendum: you need to keep the broccolini in the pan longer than you may realize. Plus, you probably should add more oil than you were expecting.  This is the only way you’re going to develop the recipe’s amazing char (and in turn texture and flavor).  It’s nothing against Molly’s directions.  She does a great job.  But I’ve rarely met a recipe that gets the timing right on pan-charred broccolini.  So many factors lengthen the cooking time: the amount of broccolini in the pan, the size of the broccolini, how hot the skillet is, how dry the greens are, etc..  At the end of the day, rely on your eyes and nose more than the recipe guidelines; otherwise you’ll wind up with sad char.  And sad char makes sad food.

Lesson 11: Chinese Takeout Containers

Do we not all hate making a paper plate of leftovers and wrapping it in foil or cling wrap?  So flimsy and unreliable!  Help your friends by stocking up on cheap Tupperware or better yet, use my friend Derya’s hack and hand out Chinese takeout containers.  They’re cheap, easy to purchase in bulk, and they get the job done.  Totally buying them next year.

Photo courtesy of my friend Sylvia, who made Brussels sprouts and bacon, just to the right of the shallots.

What lessons have you learned from Friendsgiving this year?