‘Tis the season for holiday cooking and preparation! I love this time of year. What I do not love is the repeated assistance of media outlets and specialists who will tell us that our grandmothers and great-grandmothers’ tried-and-true cooking traditions have, in fact, been trying to kill us for multiple generations.
Look, do I think all modern advice on safe food handling is wrong? No. Do I think our grandmothers were actively trying to off us with their cooking and thawing methods of old? Also, no, but with emphasis!
Soon, morning news programs and online guides will be alight with the annual reminder not to thaw your turkey improperly. Apparently, there’s a method that involves taking your frozen turkey out approximately two minutes before Thanksgiving, and expecting it to be thawed and ready to roast perfectly. The advice will very clearly remind us all to never thaw a frozen bird at room temperature, never days upon days early in the refrigerator, and certainly you should NEVER sling it into a sanitized bathtub and hope for the best. Never mind that all our ancestors used most of these methods with success.
I’m here to tell you that following that advice to not take a 20-plus-pound bird out of the freezer “too soon” was how I, as a young cook, ended up with a turkey that wasn’t done until late evening on Thanksgiving. We basically ate it with dessert. You haven’t truly lived until you’re risking fingertip frostbite chipping ice-encrusted giblet bags out of a turkey carcass while cursing. Count your blessings indeed.
Eggs. Don’t even get me started on eggs and eggnog. Real eggnog contains raw eggs. Cue the shock and awe. I’m still going to partake of it, though. I have one cup annually. That’s my limit. Ditto my absolute refusal to follow the well-meant advice not to eat raw cookie dough due to the flour and eggs being a grave risk for serious poisoning. I’m well past childhood, and I’m still gonna lick the beaters if there isn’t an actual child around. Same goes for the bowl.
That’s not to say that cooked eggs don’t have their place. Most of us enjoy eating deviled eggs. I think they were termed “deviled eggs” because after just one bite, the devil whispers in your ear, “you should probably eat a dozen of those.”
Obviously, I keep a clean kitchen and refrigerate them safely, but they are going to sit out on the appetizer table for a minute or six until they have been dutifully inhaled.
The late, great, renowned chef Anthony Bourdain repeatedly noted how grandmas across the world (whether they be Russian babushkas or Mexican abuelas) completely went against the rules of technique he learned, yet somehow made the best food. What do grandmas know that top chefs don’t?
My unscientific and very biased opinion? Most of the prior generations cooked with lots of butter and oils, lots of seasoning and made everything as flavorful as possible. They cook every meal like it’s Thanksgiving dinner.
So, I grew up always loving when we went to my respective grandmother’s homes to dine. My memories are based on really good cooking and nostalgia — nostalgia mixed with the fact that grandmas almost always cook comfort foods; they’re not out here adding sucralose and red dye No. 7 for the most part.
That’s not to say prior generations got everything right. Most of us recall not really liking vegetables much as children. The day I discovered Brussels sprouts didn’t have to be boiled or steamed to mush, I felt like the whole culinary world had been holding out on me. Do you mean to tell me I could have been eating these coated in sauce and bacon the whole time?
Another thing which I believe helps our memories of ancestral cooking is that prior generations learned to cook by just pinching and sprinkling in the right amount of any ingredient, often without exact measurements. They always go by taste. I believe this is the way.
Love
Of course, as we dig out the old family recipes, we can also concede that “love” might indeed have been the secret ingredient. They mixed it right into every meal. My grandmother made the BEST pie crust. Period. I know my grandma loved us, but her “love” in ingredient form was … lard. The main ingredient? Fat. Not shortening. Not butter. Lard.
I will be making my lard-based pie crust with impunity. I will taste raw cookie dough to make sure the flavors are right. I’m going to have my annual glass of real eggnog. If the Lord wants to take me via botulism, then I guess it was my time to go. Please say I passed doing what I loved, eating raw dough.
