Cooking Hints of Dubious Value

Another Thanksgiving dinner is behind me. I learned some things.

For the first time, I did exactly what I wanted to do, instead of making the cranberry sauce and gross oyster dressing my dad used to insist on. It was the right idea. The food was phenomenal, and he didn’t complain once.

When you listen to other people, your food will generally suffer badly. My big talent is not the ability to cook anything you throw at me and make it taste good; it’s the ability to write recipes. People who can’t cook have no idea how that works. It means this: if you ask me to cook for you, don’t tell me what to do, and don’t ask me to change my recipes. There is absolutely no point in letting me cook if you’re going to add your really bad ideas. You can cook your own bad food without my help. If I listen to you, you’ll moan about how bad the food is, and then you’ll tell people I can’t cook.

“Oh, can you use margarine instead of butter? Oh, have you tried turkey instead of pork?”

No; I can’t. If you want Weight Watchers food, go buy it in a Weight Watchers box like everyone else.

I made a pizza for a vegan friend once. It’s surprising she was willing to eat the cheese, since some poor cow’s teats had to suffer multiple microaggressions in the name of capitalism. I bought the plastic sausage my friend requested. It tasted like formaldehyde. And I am not using the word “formaldehyde” in order to be funny. That’s really what it tasted like.

Thank God she was used to the taste, so she didn’t run around afterward telling everyone my pizza tasted like formaldehyde.

I’ll tell you how most people approach cooking. They decide they want to cook something. They open a book or go to the web and pick a recipe. They assume the recipe is good without really knowing. They cook. They feel like their work is done. Most people have no palate, so they don’t know whether their food is good or not. They figure it must be good if they followed a recipe.

That’s not how a good cook does things. A good cook always creates his own recipes. He may start with someone else’s recipe, but that’s just a way to get the project going. He will always make changes later. A good cook isn’t satisfied with a recipe until he, himself, is stunned by the result.

If you’ve put in the time creating a great recipe, and then someone who can’t cook asks you to take out the cream and use skim milk, the correct response is, “Let’s go to Burger King instead.” If you don’t want the recipe, you don’t want the cook, even if you don’t realize it.

This year, I learned fresh turkey is the way to go when you bone your birds. If you thaw a turkey, you’ll probably run into ice when you bone it, and that makes your hands numb and causes problems. I used a fresh turkey this time, and I had no difficulties.

I sewed up the bird with dental floss, and it worked fine, but I should have used dental tape. It’s easier to work with, and it seems to be easier to pull out when the bird is done.

It’s pretty hard to over-salt a turkey. I boned my turkey, opened it up, salted it hard on the inside and outside, and then applied a seasoning mix that contained salt. In all likelihood, it had already been injected with salt at the turkey factory or whatever. It was great. Most turkeys don’t get enough salt.

Seasoning a turkey is really simple. I crushed 9 beef bouillon cubes and mixed them with melted butter, sage, Korbel brut, salt, and pepper. I could also have added garlic, but I forgot. I made around 8 ounces of this stuff, and I slathered it on the inside of the bird before I sewed it up. When the bird was stuffed and ready to go in the oven, I covered the outside with the seasoning mix. When you use what I use, the turkey will taste exactly the way a classic roasted turkey should taste but usually does not.

The stuffing was magnificent. I made cornbread with bacon grease, and I used it as the foundation. I sauteed 4 Aidell’s andouille sausages in butter and stirred them in, along with the sage, butter, eggs, beef broth, Korbel, and so on. I thought my dad would blow a gasket because of the sausage chunks, but he threw it right down and said it was excellent.

The turkey was fantastic, but I think it would have been even better had I cooked it at 200 instead of 275. Low temperature cooking makes a turkey juicier. I like to pray in the morning, so I didn’t get the turkey in the oven until almost noon. I had to jack up the temperature a little in order to have dinner in the afternoon.

There is nothing unsafe about cooking a turkey at 200. As long as you get the stuffing up to 165 at the end, you’re fine. I turned the heat up to 400 when I was getting close, to brown the skin.

I think people worry about turkey germs too much. Have you ever known anyone to get sick from Thanksgiving dinner? I haven’t. The government (famous for making great food) used to tell people to bring turkey to 185. Ridiculous. That’s at least 20 degrees past done, and it turns the turkey into rubber.

The government says to cook beef to an internal temperature of 145. Come on! That ruins it. I go 120 and call it done.

I came up with a good way to get the right amount of potato jacket in your mashed potatoes without choking your potato ricer. I peeled stripes off the potatoes before I boiled them. The remaining skin wasn’t enough to bother the ricer. After every potato chunk went through, I knocked the peel off the perforated plate and into my potatoes. Very easy.

I think potato ricers are overrated. I’ve used mine for a number of years, and it’s not noticeably better than a masher. The potatoes look really fluffy when they come out of it, but then you have to stir butter, milk or cream, salt, pepper, and garlic into them. After that, the result is a lot like what a masher provides.

I’ve had very good mashed potatoes at expensive restaurants, and they never looked like they were prepared with a ricer. Maybe I should dump that thing.

The beans were intoxicating. I found big green beans at the store. I broke them and simmered them for several hours yesterday. I seasoned them with a smoked ham hock, salt, pepper, a tiny bit of sugar, and some butter. The hock meat fell apart into the beans. I left the beans in the fridge overnight to let the flavors mingle. Today they were superb.

To get any flavor out of green beans or greens, you have to boil them until the texture starts to give way. It would be nice if you could have firm beans AND flavor, but you can forget it, because it doesn’t happen. If you’ve always eaten your green beans firm, you have no idea how good beans can taste.

Yankees criticize southerners for boiling vegetables until they turn into mush. I think they get the idea that we can’t cook from going to restaurants in the south where the food is bad. If you go to a Morrison’s cafeteria (a southern chain), and the beans are mushy and flavorless, the problem is this: you went to Morrison’s, where nearly everything is bad. If you ever tried my beans, you would understand why I cook them for three hours.

My gravy came out really well this year. I made it a little thinner and browner this time. I saved grease from the bottom of the turkey pan so I can make more later.

I learned pecan pie tastes even better if you screw up and triple the vanilla. I also added a little sorghum, because I was afraid I had left too much Karo in the bottle. I wanted to make up the difference. The sorghum improved the flavor. I also added a little whiskey, as always. I usually use Jack Daniel’s, which is a poor drinking whiskey that makes an excellent seasoning. This year, I did something awful. I had a nearly empty Knob Creek bottle, and I used it. Knob Creek is very good whiskey. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it, but JD would have cost me $19, and who knows when I would have used it again.

I think things worked out well. My dad was happy, the workload was not too bad, and I got a decent meal.

I still have a lot of food. I plan to get rid of it no later than Saturday. I don’t want this stuff sitting around tempting me. Thanksgiving is over. Time to move on. I could have a debauched weekend of reheated turkey and stuffing with gravy. All of these things get better after a day in the fridge. I’m not going to do it. It’s a sick American tradition that needs to go.

It’s kind of sad, seeing food this good go to the dump. I have never had holiday food that comes anywhere close to what I can cook for myself. I don’t care. It has to go, go, GO.

Christmas will be a lean operation. Prime rib, potatoes, salad, and maybe cheesecake. Much easier than what I just did. Then I’ll throw the leftovers out again.

I rarely cook anything good these days. It’s no longer a hobby. I try to make things that are quick and reasonably healthy. Holiday foods are aberrations.

This may be my dad’s last Thanksgiving, so I’m glad he enjoyed it. A friend congratulated me on my dad’s “first” Thanksgiving, meaning his first since he asked God for salvation. That was nice, but I’m not sure my dad is saved at the moment.

I don’t know if he understood what he was doing when he asked for salvation. I’m not even sure why he agreed to do it. Since then, he has said things indicating he doesn’t really believe.

I don’t believe in the doctrine of “eternal security.” I just learned the proper name for it a few days ago. I used to believe it. It means you can never lose your salvation. I’ve seen all sorts of testimonies from Christians who believe they went to hell, and I read a convincing book by a lady who said she was taken to hell and saw Christians there. I think at least some of these people are telling the truth.

Some people will point to verses like, “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Here’s a problem:

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

It certainly appears that Jesus was describing Christians who had called on him.

If calling on the Lord, all by itself, will bring salvation, why can’t renouncing God later, through words or actions, remove it?

Revelation 14 says people who renounce Jesus during the tribulation will go to hell. I don’t see why things should be any different now. I believe fear of hell is one of the main reasons the martyrs of the past were willing to be tortured and killed rather than repent.

Here’s what Revelation 14 says:

And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.

You have to be careful about focusing on one verse and forgetting the rest. Peter said this:

For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning.

Did the disciples receive salvation when they believed in Jesus before he was crucified? Many would say yes, but if that’s true, what about Judas? The Bible describes him as “lost,” and he committed suicide in a place that symbolizes hell. It sure looks like he went to hell, but if he believed before he died, and he could not lose his salvation, what’s going on?

If my dad can’t lose his salvation, then I should never have bothered talking to him about God, because he went to Sunday school when he was a kid, before becoming an atheist. If calling on God in 1938 solved all of his problems, then I have been spinning my wheels over nothing.

I hope I’m mistaken, because it would mean most people I care about would be in heaven or on their way there, but I think salvation can be lost pretty easily.

Am I worried about my dad? No, because God keeps telling me he will be saved. My expectation has always been that my dad will give up for real when death looks him in the face. That can still happen. Maybe what happened in September, when he asked for salvation the last time, was just a rehearsal.

I want to get this right. My own salvation, I mean. I don’t want to die and find out I’m on the wrong path.

Tomorrow I plan to eat normal food again. I almost dread Christmas dinner. I do not understand why I have a talent for cooking, since it causes more trouble than it’s worth. Today I wondered if it might have come from Satan instead of God. Maybe when I cook, demons are telling me how much butter to use and which spice to add. I hope not.

Derek Prince cautioned people to avoid the martial arts, because they tend to be entangled with eastern religion. He said he cast demons out of a karate expert, and afterward, the man couldn’t do a kick he used to do. Supposedly, demons had been helping him kick.

Maybe the stories about Robert Johnson are true. Maybe you really can sell your soul to Satan in exchange for the ability to play the guitar.

I would hate to get in trouble with God just so I could make coconut flan.

Anyway, Thanksgiving is over. Now I can relax.