I was 18, away at college, and having my first-ever Thanksgiving away from home. Several frosh buddies and I decided to cook a Thanksgiving feast — how hard could it be? We’d all seen our Moms do it many times.
I thought it would be great to have homemade bread, so I whipped up the dough, popped it into the pan and shoved it in the preheated oven. 45 minutes later out came this glob of a mess in the pan — I didn’t know what “letting it rise” meant. The rest of the meal was actually pretty good.
We barbeque our turkey on the Weber charcoal grill every year and use my Mom’s bread and sausage stuffing recipe. Her “secret” is to moisten the stuffing with the water used to boil the giblets. Turkey always comes out perfectly cooked with crispy golden-brown skin. The Weber is really fool-proof and highly recommended (plus no danger of a huge kettle of oil catching on fire). Just use the indirect method and fill up the charcoal once an hour.
Did you stuff the bird? A neighbor got a Weber and decided to do a stuffed turkey. The stuffing absorbed too much of the smoke to be palatable.
Turkey was fine, but it took forever, especially when "insulated" by the stuffing.