Kristen has a theory: that the Thanksgivings that go spectacularly wrong are actually the best, most memorable ones.
We hear from food writer and soon-to-be cookbook author Eric Kim, Los Angeles Times cooking columnist Ben Mims, and from you (!), our community, about ghosts of Thanksgivings past.
Referenced in this episode:
Genius-Hunter Extra-Credit:
Special thanks to listeners Sarah Copeland, Melissa Dain, and Myo Quinn for sharing their stories. We'll be back next week with a genius recipe; if you come across one in your holiday prep, I'd love to hear about it at genius@food52.com.
Kristen Miglore (voiceover): Hi. I'm Kristen Miglore, lifelong genius hunter. For almost a decade, I've been unearthing the recipes that have changed the way we cook. Now on The Genius Recipe Tapes, we get to hear from the geniuses themselves. This week, we're trying something different. In the spirit of a very different year that could use some happy stories, we went and found some. So we'll be talking to freelance writer and soon-to-be cookbook author Eric Kim on his most ambitious meal and biggest disaster. And Ben Mims, cooking columnist at the L. A. Times, who will remind us not to over-promise and to lean on Bloody Marys. And we'll hear some of your most memorable Thanksgivings. Be sure to stick around for the last one, which, as of this taping, already made me happy-cry, twice. But first I wanted to tell you about my happiest Thanksgiving.
I have this theory that the perfect Thanksgiving is sort of bunk. Because the best and most memorable Thanksgivings are exactly the opposite of that famous Norman Rockwell picture, Either because we decided it was time to try something completely different, or we had to make a celebration happen without access to all of the traditional trappings, or because something or everything just went so spectacularly wrong. And that was definitely true in 2005, the year that I convinced my family that we needed to make a turducken. I was working at my first job in economics, analyzing Carlyle's portfolios all day long and from my cubicle, I thought about food all the time. I had somehow heard about Turducken, the Cajun specialty of Paul Prudhomme, that just in case you're not familiar with it, involves stuffing a chicken inside of a duck inside of a turkey, roasting it all together. Much later, by the way, I realized that the reason I had probably heard about it in the first place was probably thanks to my future boss at Food52, Amanda Hesser, who had written about it for The New York Times a few years earlier. So anyway, my parents were amused by how passionate I felt about this, and they agreed. But then we all realized what was involved. Hours of clumsily de-boning all three birds, chopping courts and courts of onions and bell peppers and celery, to cook into three different stuffings, then flopping them all on top of each other and stitching them back together to sort of resemble a turkey again, but just kind of lumpier. I used one of my five precious vacation days for the year to go home early and help my dad get ready. We cooked for two straight days, and then, after he got up at 4 30 in the morning to start the slow roasting for eight hours, we finally got to carve it. And it was terrible. All of that labor and butchery and TLC that we had put into this thing, we're left with an enormous, steamy lump of poultry and stuffings, things that all tasted weirdly the same, which we would be eating for days. But the taste did not matter because we had already had our best Thanksgiving ever. We were drinking wine and dancing and wrestling those birds, and nobody was blaming anyone for burning grandmother's stuffing recipe or throwing out the potato cooking water again. And best of all, we have a story that we have been telling our friends and referencing in family emails ever since. And unlike all of the perfect Thanksgivings that we've had. we actually remember it.
Next up. I talked to our friend Eric Kim, a freelance writer who's currently working on a Korean American cookbook with his mom in Atlanta, about his most memorable Thanksgivings. The good, the bad and the very, very pretty.
Hi, Eric.
Eric Kim: Hi, Kristen.
Kristen: So I wanted to talk to you about Thanksgivings. First of all, I would love to hear what your typical Thanksgiving looks like?
Eric: You know, I don't think I have a typical Thanksgiving. It changes so much every year, depending on my mood or where the family is. Last year I spent it with a couple of food media friends. They're like my real friends, I shouldn't call them media friends. But I had a huge fight with my boyfriend at the time. And he and I are both—we're used to taking charge of Thanksgiving and cooking all of it, and not really having to answer to anyone else. And so he suggested that maybe Thanksgiving, the one day that we shouldn't be celebrating together because we're both so intense about it. And that upset me, and then we got to fight, and then eventually we broke up. But because of that, I did have a lovely Thanksgiving with my friends. That's always been my dilemma when it comes to Thanksgiving is how much control do I get to have? Because I usually want all of it.
Kristen: But just take a quick step back, when you were growing up, did you have a typical Thanksgiving? Did you do the same thing every year or what? Or even then, was it dependent on circumstances and what family you had around?
Eric: it was definitely more stable back then, and we had more routine. But it evolved over the years. When my parents first came to the United States, no one was cooking this kind of food, so they didn't know how to do it. But there was an older aunt who lived in south Georgia, and she hosted these big dinners, and that's where we had green bean casserole for the first time, and we would drive down there for the holiday. But eventually, once the kids got old enough—like when we turned eight or nine. That's when we took it under our own wings. We wanted to cook the dinner that we were watching on Food Network. So it became a tradition of all the kids cooking the American food and the parents sitting back and watching. That was always just so fun. All the kids cooking together from the night before to the day of. That marathon of trying to get the food on the table was always very fun for me. We kept perfecting these really old recipes that we've been using. And so there was it. After that, I remember just talking to the cousins and being like, can we just try something else this year? So we did small plates and a seven-course fun little meal for the family. And that was enjoyable because it was a new way of doing it.
Kristen: So how did that seven-course meal work? How did you plan it? How did you cook it? How did you serve it?
Eric: I am so embarrassed to talk about it because It sounds so fussy. And it was back when I found my voice in the kitchen. At the time, I thought a seven-course Thanksgiving dinner was so fancy. I remember certain courses because they were my dinner party go-to's in those years. I think I started with a salade composée—just a composed salad of roasted fall vegetables. It had a wasabi lime vinaigrette that I learned from Nigella and some arugula. I remember plating it with my cousin. I think I assigned my cousin to plate it, and when I say it's finicky, it was kind of dumb. It's arbitrary, but an apple goes here, and because that part is red this part of the plate needs some green. Using the space of the white plate to create a nice, flat, single layer picture. I’m revealing a part about myself that’s very anal. She was doing it and she was doing it wrong. So I told her that she was doing it wrong and I took over. I know I'm a monster on Thanksgiving. It's something I'm still dealing with. Maybe my cousins were reeling from the trauma of having to cook under me on Thanksgiving. But I think it was fun. and the hard work at the end is always worth it when you're sitting down with the family and everyone just really appreciates the little things. When we can come home for it, it is always really special because it's our time. As the children of immigrants to go off into the world. Anyone who goes off and cooks for themselves, in their own homes, in their own kitchens without parents. That's when you learn the most and that’s when you bring back some tricks.
Kristen: I love that. It continues to be this reflection of the way that you were cooking for the adults, even as a kid. Maybe when you were a kid, your parents were seeing you all the time and they didn't need to have the gaps filled in about what your life was and what you were learning. But now that you've gotten into this habit of bringing them back things that you've learned and that you're excited to show them, that must be so exciting for them to get to know more about your life in a way that they wouldn't.
Eric: Yeah, I think it's definitely nice. It's kinda like, how's your day? Or like it's more like your how’s your year?
Kristen: How's your life?
Eric: Yes, how's your life?
Kristen: Can you tell me about your most memorable Thanksgiving disaster?
Eric: I only thought of this recently because I had blacked it out, I think, because it was so traumatic. In my last year of college. It was a gas oven, and I hadn't grown up with that many gas ovens, ours were always electric. I didn't know that you couldn't lay foil on the bottom of the gas oven. If you don't know that you can't, by the way, because it can catch on fire. And so my turkey was roasting and the foil caught on fire. it was dripping in its crappy aluminum pan because I don't have real housewares. That lit on fire. I’m trying to think about the details that I need to go for.
Kristen: It’s very vivid, already.
Eric: It was vivid. There's a fire in your house and you're already feeling very panicked. We put the fire out, of course, but it was a lot of smoke now. So I stupidly opened the front door because the kitchen was right next to the front door, and that went into the very tiny hallway with the fire alarm. And what I should have done was opened the window only and even though it would have taken longer, tried to make the smoke go out that way. Anyway, I learned a lot after this. Because a little smoke went to the main hallway that triggered the entire building, so this ten-floor dorm, everyone had to evacuate. It was like 7 p.m on Thursday. And I remember feeling so embarrassed because it's a disaster. All these people, hundreds of kids are evacuating. They don't quite know it's you yet, but they're gonna find out, and you're gonna be totally unpopular. Anyway just kidding, not that you ever think about that in college.
Kristen: No, never.
(Eric and Kristen laugh)
Eric: It was bad though because I was walking down the stairs and it was my brother and his girlfriend at the time, just three of us. And I was walking down the stairs. I remember one specific girl. I don't really remember anyone else, but that one girl. She had on this really nice black dress with high heels. She was also carrying a tray of turkey. She was carrying the entire bird down the stairs in her high heels. Oh my God, she dressed up for this! I ruined her night. I ruin so many peoples' nights. And it was hours later before we were allowed to even go back into the building. And so everyone's like out in the cold holding their turkeys. Luckily, my brother had an apartment so it took the not-burnt turkey that we really didn't want to eat it anymore. We lugged it to Brooklyn and finished dinner there. But meanwhile, I ruined everyone else's night, and I felt so bad. I remember feeling so much stress in my tiny body at the time. I was like, what is this feeling? And guilt mostly racked with guilt. Maybe that's why I became a monster for Thanksgiving every year. I want it to be perfect for everyone because I ruined that one for so many hundreds of kids.
Kristen: Were there actually any repercussions? Did people find out it was you?
Eric: No, there were no repercussions. I know that we got a new stove. After that, they have to give you a new stove. Did you know that?
Kristen: if your equipment actually catches fire, you get a new one?
Eric: Yeah. So we got a fancy new stove after that.
Kristen: I just feel like the Thanksgivings that went the worst for me are the ones that I remember. And they bring people together in a weird way, even if in the moment you're a little panicked or you feel sad that you don't have your perfect turkey that never caught fire.
Eric: Yeah, that's so true, actually. I don't remember any of the perfect ones. I just remember that the food was perfect. And I don't remember anything else about those nights, but I do remember individual Thanksgivings where a particular dish was really bad.
Kristen: Well, and I think that your seven-course meal and the other things that you've done to push boundaries are helping both you and your family remember that much more.
Eric: That's nice.
Kristen: You'll do it again this year.
Eric: Oh, yeah. This year, we will definitely remember. It's gonna be a big one.
Kristen: (voiceover) This is The Genius Recipe Tapes. We'll be right back.
Next up, Ben Mims, cooking columnist at the L. A. Times and the creator of a 2020 Thanksgiving menu so genius that it took over the entire food section.
Hi, Ben.
Ben Mims: Hi, Kristen.
Kristen: I would love to hear about your most memorable Thanksgivings. But first, could you set the scene of what your typical Thanksgiving looked like growing up?
Ben: Oh, absolutely. So my Thanksgivings growing up were your pretty typical Thanksgiving that you see in Home Alone or any kind of eighties movies where it always starts with, oddly enough, everyone kind of arrived in the morning. And we would eat deviled eggs and pimento cheese stuffed in celery sticks as appetizers, and we would all drink those with Bloody Marys, no matter if you were a child or an adult. Then after a few hours around two o'clock, we would all sit down to the big meal. And then everyone takes naps, wakes up around like five or six, has dessert and then just lays around for the rest of the day. So it's pretty great.
Kristen: Wow. Okay, the first question is, did the kids' Bloody Marys have alcohol in them?
Ben: I don't remember if they didn't, because I remember drinking them, and I was definitely in high school like they definitely did. So I don't remember if I was ever given a virgin one. Once you are, at least in high school, you could have one for the holidays. It was a special thing. Do not tell anyone because my parents probably got arrested, but it was delicious.
Kristen: At least it was once you were in high school. I was picturing eight-year-olds, then walking around with [Bloody Marys].
(Ben and Kristen laugh.)
Ben: I don’t remember those years. I don't think so. I think my earliest memory was me as a teenager with the regular Bloody Mary. So I think we're all good.
Kristen: So since then, have you ended up cooking a lot of the Thanksgivings?
Ben: Oh, yes. I like to be able to control the entire menu. If I have friends over, they bring wine or something to drink, maybe a pan of yeast rolls, But everything else I'm going to do myself, which is fun on certain levels. But I have in the past years, I’ve loosened the reins a little bit, and I've really enjoyed a potluck style Thanksgiving. It is a lot less pressure and you get to make the one thing you really want to eat, and then you get to eat someone else's food, which always tastes better than anything you make yourself. I remember one year I was in charge of taking the cranberry sauce out of the can, and I just plopped it all suction and everything onto the plate standing up, brought to the table. And my mother was horrified. She's like, are you kidding me? At least go slice it. It's just one of those very alien things that even though it is a can, you slice it and it looks weird, but also it is delicious, and it's just very simple. I think people really like to make a fuss about holiday dinners and dishes, but when it comes to things like that they just realize they don't have to put any effort at all and just open the can, I think they find a lot of joy in that as well. It's very relaxing.
Kristen: Yeah, and there's something too, about the fact that it holds that shape of the can and the ridges on the side and everything. And the fact is that they just don't see a lot of foods like that every day.
Ben: That's right. Especially now. No one in our world, in the New York California food worlds that we have been working in, no one really eats that way because our job is to always make new and homemade versions of everything. So it is an odd thing to come back to a canned food that literally has the shape imprinted on it.
Kristen: Yeah, but then have you seen the people who, even if they make the homemade stuff, stuff it into a can just so that it has the same nostalgic shape?
Ben: Honestly, that's kind of brilliant. So I might try that myself this year or next year. I love that.
Kristen: The cranberry sauce was always one of my favorite parts, and the meal truly doesn't feel complete without it. So even when I started making Canal House's Cranberry-Port Gelée, which sounds so fancy, but it's basically the same stuff that's in the can, it just has a couple of other flavors in it. Because the stuff in the can is just cranberry, sugar, and water, cooked down and the skin strained out, but so you can do that at home and the Canal House version has some port, has some juniper berries, and some black pepper. And it's really good. But I honestly feel like I like it so much because it so closely resembles the canned stuff. The texture is exactly the same.
Ben: Yeah, absolutely, I think you need it. That's why I've never really enjoyed the chunky relishes. I prefer smooth jelly things. This year one of the things I made was a currant berry membrillo paste that doesn't really set as firm as a quince membrillo. It’s spoon soft because I prefer that really smooth, soft texture versus all the chunky cranberry. Although I know I've done a lot of things like that. But I think I think you're right. I think there's something about having newer flavors and fresher flavors, but in a form that is nostalgic, like what you remember.
Kristen: Can you tell me a little bit more about the package that you put together for the LA. Times, including the cranberry membrillo paste?
Ben: It was fun in a lot of ways, and it was very taxing in others. I think it took about six weeks in total of testing. Some dishes I made a couple of times and it was perfect. I was like, this is great. And then we just crossed tested it, Others, it took about upwards of 15 times to make sure to get it right. So I knew, of all the dishes that we put out in a year, people are going to make the Thanksgiving ones. So I really wanted to make sure those worked for everyone. But the kind of strategy behind it was—I toyed around with doing a smaller Thanksgiving and in a lot of ways, I kind of wish I had because some people have been writing about doing small Thanksgivings. But I wanted also to take the opportunity to lean into how unpredictable the year has been. And I've always been one of those people that I would do a completely new Thanksgiving menu every year if I could. I don't particularly love to keep things coming back and have these like traditions. It sounds very anarchist to me, but I'm not. I just like to try new things.
Kristen: Well, then I would also love to hear about Thanksgivings that didn't go according to plan. Are there any memorable Thanksgiving disasters that come to mind?
Ben: I would say I have not had too many outright disasters. I think the biggest kind of failure for me was over-promising a really crispy skin on a turkey and not being able to deliver that. Even if you do attain it, it's really hard to keep it that way. I remember several years ago when we were living in San Francisco,, there's a video of my partner took of me taking the turkey out of the oven and then cutting into it with a knife, and it had this great crackling shatter on the part that I cut. But twenty minutes later, as we were starting to eat, everything had gone slack. The crispy skin doesn't stick around for too long. So I think the best thing when cooking in general, but definitely the holidays—do not over-promise too many things. Because then people will be let down, and you don't want that to happen.
Kristen: How do you avoid that, then? Do you kind of set up expectations of we'll see how this goes? That’s what I would do. But what would you do?
Ben: I love that tactic, just showing up for whatever happens, I usually never tell anyone what the menu will be unless the desert or the drinks that they're bringing really depend on it. Because I like people to be surprised. There have been dinner parties passed and holiday meals where maybe something didn't go right. And I remember either throwing something completely in the trash and just acting like it never was made. Or taking a cake that didn't cook through in the middle or had some kind of awful disaster and just cutting it up, making a trifle, and saying, here's dessert. So no one ever expects one thing and then gets another. You could always hide behind that. But I like your tactic, show up and eat what I give you, no matter what.
Kristen: Okay, so what would be your most memorable, happy Thanksgiving story? Successful Thanksgiving story?
Ben: Actually a couple of years ago when I went to my friend Faraday's house in Maryland and we had Thanksgiving with her family. It was wonderful because I just showed up, I brought a bottle of wine and so we ate what everyone else and cooked. And they ended up making a huge turkey and putting stuffing inside of it and which is one of the things that growing up we never did because of the whole, people are scared that it won’t cook through. We'll overcook the bird. Putting stuffing as dressing on the side was easier. But with her Thanksgiving, they put the stuffing inside. And even though the turkey cooked for a million hours, they would take it out and baste on it with butter every few minutes. And when they took it out of the oven, I had never seen a more perfect golden turkey. And the stuffing that was inside of it was the tastiest stuffing and one of the top five dishes ever. It was just so wonderful. And they scooped it out and even though it was wet and soggy, it was oddly crispy in certain parts and just had the best flavor to it. And so that moment on, I kind of realized, you know what? It doesn't really matter if you overcook the turkey to get the stuffing done right, because the turkey will always be overcooked no matter what, even if you try to do it with no stuffing. If you try to just get it perfectly, at least the breast will always be overcooked. It’s actually worth it to overcook the turkey to get that great of a stuffing. And so that was really one of the best [Thanksgivings], not having to cook a thing and having a real revelatory moment about how wonderful stuffing inside turkey can really be.
Kristen: Plus, that's what gravy is for!
Ben: Exactly! Turkey is always going to be dry. If anything else is dry, just pour gravy over it and it's gonna be great.
Kristen: And what will your Thanksgiving look like this year?
Ben: Well, it's funny, because we've actually already had our Thanksgiving. For recipe developers, Thanksgiving is like the beginning of October, or for some people, it's July. During all the testing, my partner and I sat down to at least three meals of all the dishes together. So we've had our kind of fix of all those flavors together. So I think this year, the day before, Actually, I'm, you know, supporting a local restaurant of mine who's doing their take out versions of everything. So I've ordered all the sides from them, so we're going to have all their sides the day before, which scratches that itches for those kinds of flavors. And then on the actual day, we have a friend, our neighbor, who has a big porch. And so we are going to go sit on her porch while she stays inside, and we're gonna talk through a screen door and she's gonna make food, and some of it will be traditional and some of it won't be. I'm making dessert, I know that. So I do have to cook one thing, But other than that, it will be a new mix of everything, which I'm delighted by, honestly,
Kristen: What will you bring for dessert?
Ben: So right now I'm actually toying with what I can make with sweet potatoes. And I think I found a recipe in one of Edna Lewis's books, The in Pursuit of Flavor. She takes sweet potatoes, boils them [hole] until they're tender and then cuts them into really thick slabs and then bakes them in this sugar syrup that just has a little bit nutmeg but a lot of lemon. It's like a whole lemon's worth of juice and all the zest. And then you make that till it gets reduced. I think I might just make that which I think it's supposed to be a side dish, but I'll just bring some ice cream and maybe I'll make some kind of little crumble topping and put on top of that just to have something that's traditional-ish but lighter and a little different than what we're used to.
Kristen: Finally, to round us out stories from you, our listeners. And Let me just say the stories that you sent in were so wonderful and they made me laugh and they made me cry. Thank you so much for doing that. I also want to be mindful and say that just because things are different doesn't always mean they're better, of course. For a lot of people out there, this year's been very hard, and Thanksgiving is going to continue to be very hard. But I was encouraged, and I hope that you will be, too, by all of the ways that you all have leaned into the not perfect Thanksgivings both good and bad, and came away with something memorable.
Listener Sarah Copeland: The first time I hosted Thanksgiving in my house in upstate New York, my husband, my daughter and I, my daughter Greta, was about two years old and my nieces were visiting from Chicago and they were, you know, eight or nine or ten years old. And we were so excited to make everything from scratch and really just experienced this beautiful meal in our home. It was one of the first times I ever hosted a holiday, so we went on a really big hike that morning. We had a beautiful hike in one of our favorites, and then we came back, and we set to work, making our pumpkin pie filling from scratch from a freshly roasted pumpkin and making a crust from scratch and chilling it. We had so much fun and I have all these memories of the girls rolling the pie dough and passing it around the countertop and my little daughter's voice saying, my turn, your turn. So we made this beautiful pie. It was so gorgeous, and I was pretty amazed that we could make something so beautiful with the three little girls helping. And then we sat down to the beautiful meal to eat, and we took a bite of the pumpkin pie right when it was dessert time and everyone took a bite and was sort of looking around the room at each other. And then my nieces took another bite, and at the same time we all just paused and burst out laughing because we had forgotten the sugar. We had completely forgotten the sugar in the pumpkin pie filling. So it was a very savory, creamy, spot-on perfect but savory and not at all sweet pumpkin pie. So we laugh about that still to this day, and it's such a great memory. But I used canned pumpkin now, so there's not too much going on, and I don't forget to add the sugar.
Listener Melissa Dain: This is Melissa Dain from Brooklyn, New York. My most memorable Thanksgiving is 2012. Just weeks earlier, my friend Gil's parents' house had been ravaged by Hurricane Sandy, so the whole family had gathered for the holiday in Jill's small Brooklyn apartment. Her mom had taken over her kitchen and the neighbors, and things were a-buzz. Everyone labored over their dishes. I walked into the kitchen to find Jill's mom crying over burnt yams. Taking her hand, I let her in next door and opened the oven door, revealing a pile of green beans that sat at the bottom beneath a shattered Pyrex dish. Later, Jill found us sitting on the floor, laughing and drinking wine. Wishing you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving
Listener Myo Quinn: Hi. I'm Myo Quinn, a New Yorker now living in Charlottesville, Virginia. Six Thanksgivings ago, I was one week overdue with our second child and in the kitchen cooking Thanksgiving dinner. I remember having to set the roaster towards the front of the oven rack and then used the oven door to push it all the way in because I couldn't lean down far enough. I could barely reach the top of the cutting board over in my enormous belly, but I was running so high on energy. Maybe I was nesting. That year, I cooked only the things I wanted to eat for Thanksgiving. A chicken simply roasted with olive oil, salt and pepper, the broccoli cheddar and wild rice casserole from Smitten Kitchen, roasted curry potatoes, creamed cornbread, pumpkin bread with a maple drizzle, and a pecan pie. We had plenty of carbs. At some point, I realized I needed cornmeal, so I bundled up our two-year-old son and we walked 10 blocks to the grocery store. Between my waddle and his teeny, tiny legs. It was a long trip. We got the cornmeal and, of course, a bag of King's Hawaiian rolls. About five hours after putting the serving platters away, our son Oliver was born. He is a joyful kid that loves ramen, udon, bagels, baguettes, and pasta in every shape. I think that one Thanksgiving meal has a lot to do with it.
Kristen: (voiceover) That's it for our Thanksgiving variety hour. I hope that whatever your Thanksgiving looks like this year that you find some moments of joy and relief and maybe find someone to tell you about your most memorable Thanksgivings. Our show was put together by Coral Lee, Emily Hanhan, and me, Kristen Miglore, If you like The Genius Recipe Tapes, be sure to rate and review us. It really helps. See you next time.