About a week ago we decided to have a few friends over for dinner on Saturday. Given our weekly Ultimate commitments I suggested that we have turkey as it would allow me to begin the cooking process before we left the apartment. Then, when we returned, there wouldn’t be that much left to do before dinner.
So on Tuesday, a day strategically chosen to take advantage of a 10% student discount at one of the local grocery stores, I purchased a turkey. It turns out that as we are not near a major turkey holiday the selection is some what limited, and appeared to be rather picked over. After a few minutes, and some confusion about what I was looking at, I eventually settled on a 5.5 kg bird. Once I returned home I placed it in the fridge to thaw for Saturday.
On Wednesday I baked a batch of bread to use in the stuffing. A various points throughout the week I made sure that we had the other ingredients that I would require for stuffing.
Early on Saturday afternoon I pulled the carcass out of the fridge to examine it and try to figure out how long the cooking process would take.
While I was looking at the packaging and cooking instructions something seemed amiss. The suggested times were much longer than I expected, and they were seeming to suggest that the bird should be cooked from frozen.
After a few minutes of pondering and examination I finally accepted that I had mistakenly purchased a stuffed turkey. Not only was my well planned thawing unnecessary (and possibly dangerous), my stuffing preparations were also superfluous. It was as though I had given myself a punch in the gut (as there was no one to blame but myself).
Though I guess I am willing to assign a little blame to the designers of the turkey packaging. Instead of including the fact that the turkey was stuffed with the description of the turkey (grain fed, butter-basted, etc.) they included in a small, differently coloured box below the large main box. Only very close inspection of the packaging would have allowed one to see this key piece of information.
What I found rather surprising about this whole thing is that the fact that turkey was stuffed wasn’t more prominent. I would think that the marketers would want to make people aware of one of the key features of the turkey, namely that it was pre-stuffed. If I missed when looking for an empty turkey it seems quite likely that there may be others who missed that it was a stuffed turkey.
As much as I wasn’t a fan of the pre-stuffed turkey (which was likely drier than it should have been because of a mangled cooking process) I am glad to know that I am not fan of pre-stuffed turkey stuffing and that I need to be on the lookout for pre-stuffed turkeys posing as the unstuffed variety.
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2 comments:
'Bummer' on the stuffed turkey. What an unpleasant surprise.
An incredibly unpleasant surprise.
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