Quotes About Cooking

Mom cooked a lot of turkey when I was growing up. Turkey meatloaf, turkey burgers, ground turkey shepherd's pie - my childhood was the Bubba Gump of turkey. You'd think I would be sick of it, but when I find gems like Gwyneth Paltrow's turkey meatball recipe, it's as though the fowl is no longer foul to me.

I make a very special Christmas brunch. And I start early in the morning because I like the smell of the turkey cooking.

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

I think with lean cuts of chicken and beef, fish, turkey, ground beef and bison, you can't go wrong with those.

In July and August, when everyone I know is at the beach, I am cooking through turkey, potato, and pie recipes for Bon Appetit's November issue.

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.

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.

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

I like turkey with all the trimmings, bread sauce, cranberry sauce.

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.

We don't yet call it 'Thxgvng,' because any holiday whose centerpiece sits in an oven for four to six hours, after having sat out for as long to reach room temperature, must be spelled all the way out. Cook a turkey. You'll see. This is to say that you're not just roasting a turkey, obviously.

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.

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

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

You should brine your turkey. Don't even think about not brining your turkey. Ever.

One year, we tried to deep-fry a turkey. It must have been really humid outside, because the temperature of the oil got thrown off. It ended up being slow-cooked in oil - black on the outside and raw on the inside.

Generally I don't find that basting does a lot of anything! I think what makes the most difference is treating the turkey ahead of time with a dry brine. It really does provide a very moist result.

Once you start thinking of different dishes in terms of how they're heated, you quickly realize that the key to successfully pulling off a big meal is to diversify. If you plan on five casseroles and a turkey, you're gonna run out of oven space. Don't do it!

Turkey burgers receive a fair amount of disparagement, and it's not unfounded.

The main problems with cooked ground turkey are, one, it doesn't taste like much, and, two, it's dry.

Turkeys are perfect for feeding larger gatherings.

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.

You don't read many positive things about Iran in the press, which is depressing, but when I go back to my grandparents' house in the hills, and I'm sitting by the pool, sipping a bootleg Turkish beer, watching a pirate DVD, eating my grandma's cooking... you realise there is a real bridge between politics and country and people.