Thanksgiving a Little Differently

This year I’m going to chuck a chicken in the slow cooker with potatoes, parsnips and carrots and be done with it.

Sacrilege! you say. What is Thanksgiving if not an indulgent, roasted feast of turkey stuffed with fatty, herby, soft bread that leaves you comatose?

Turns out, there are more important things. In past years, I’ve wet-brined, spatchcocked and barbecued a giant beast of a bird. I’ve stuffed it with sourdough and chocolate filling and roasted it to crispy perfection and I’ve done two chickens in the oven at once because it was more affordable when feeding a crowd of 16.

This year, there’s no party. As per Covid rules re: Montreal’s red zone diagnosis, I won’t be inviting the usual horde to my kitchen. So I thought, shove it. I’ll spend the day outside, hopefully enjoying some beautiful fall weather, and come home to a cooked bird with enough of the fixings to call it Thanksgiving.

Now, the downside with slow-cooking is you don’t get crispy skin, which I find a ridiculous waste of an opportunity. And I hate gelatinous skin. I could never get behind Hainanese chicken rice, flavourful as the fat is, for example.

That’s why I’ll remove the skin in advance and then salting and broiling it to five-minute crispy perfection. I could get out the kitchen torch, but that goes against the laidback spirit of the event. I figure a quick broil takes about as much time as scooping (yes, scooping) the slow-cooked bird and vegetables onto a plate (bowl?). The fall-apart chicken will be incredibly tender and the juices below (much less fatty now that the skin isn’t involved) will soak into the vegetables. No, they won’t be crispy-edged either, but my day will be my own, and no one will judge me.

I’ll be there in my kitchen with my elbows on the tables, spooning juicy pieces of skinless chicken into my mouth followed by sweet, tender carrots, creamy potatoes and mouthfuls of crunchy salty, puffed-up chicken skin.

This may be a new tradition.

If, however, you desire a stuffed turkey, here are some recipes. Anyway you do it, the trick is to use enough salt. Always. This is not the time skimp.

Thanksgiving 2013: Brined Turkey, Gluten-free Stuffing, Pan Drippings, a Charcuterie Platter, Crispy Parsnips, Homemade Cookies, and the Annual Marriage Proposal

Spatchcocked, Wet-Brined, BBQ-ed Thanksgiving Turkey: Not For Beginners

Happy socially distanced Thanksgiving.