ILoveCostco.com

I cannot believe what happened to my turkey this year. Maybe Costco God was punishing me for not buying a turkey from Costco.

This year, I bought an 18-pound Butterball Turkey from a local supermarket. I gladly paid $43, instead of $18 I would have paid at Costco. I wanted this turkey to be super fantastic.

Fast forward to Thanksgiving Day. The turkey was in the oven, and everything was going OK. I was watching the temperature going up slowly on my digital thermometer. And then the temperature appeared to be stuck. My turkey was getting darker and darker, but the thermometer still read 153 degrees. So, I took out my backup thermometer and a backup probe. To my shock, I found out that my turkey was over-cooked by 40 degrees. (205 degrees instead of 165).

Turkey was all I was thinking about for the last 2 weeks. I was very disappointed. I wanted to cry. Dinner was still OK, but it was not super fantastic. I kept thinking ‘next year’, but I don’t know if I can wait that long. I may have to bake a turkey for Christmas. I don’t know. I try not to think about it too much, but this bothers me.

I need to troubleshoot my thermometers and probes and make sure this will not happen again. Also, from this point, I will always use 2 thermometers when I cook ANYTHING. And I shall keep a backup thermometer and backup probes. It will be like when I used to be a wedding photographer. I have photographed hundreds of weddings. I carried 2 cameras at all times and had a backup camera in the car. My camera broke down only once during the ceremony. But I had another identical camera already on my body, so everything went smoothly. That’s the mentality I shall adopt when I cook with an oven. I shall prepare and focus.

I hope you had a super-fantastic turkey dinner.