Talk turkey to me

The CRM you use says a lot about how fast you want to move with Adio, the AICRM revenue compounds around the clock.

“Connect your email and calendar and Adio instantly build your CRM around your business so you're ready for action from day one.”

With universal context, Adio's intelligence layer, every customer, signal compounds into one surface your whole business runs on.

Adio is the intelligent system that never sleeps the next era of revenue runs on Adio, check it out now.

You can go to Adio.com/todayexplained and you'll get 15% off your first year that's AICR.com/todayexplained. Support for take care of Adio comes from Apple News, plus Apple News plus has everything you're into on the one place. Over 500 top publications covering local and national news, food, sports, plus daily puzzles, audio, and more. New subscribers try it free for one month at news.appel/learn terms apply. It's going to keep your eye burned.

Yes, it's a horrendous reputation. He brides the turkey overnight in a pink bucket. You guys, I love Thanksgiving. I'm what you would call a professional guest. I show up to my cousin's house with a side dish, my sparkling personality, and a to-go container.

Because I'm not leaving here with something. Of course, the centerpiece for most Thanksgiving is the turkey. And if you're unsure of what you're doing, taking on that bird can feel daunting.

That turkey is so lucky. I've never seen such a beautiful turkey.

But friends, this time, it's going to go great. Because this week, unexplained it to me, we'll cover it all. Why we eat turkey? How not to feel disgusting afterwards. And what it takes to make a turkey, they'll talk about for years to come. To start, we got a professional chef.

My name is Hamil Waley, and I'm a chef, a recipe developer, a video creator, and an author. And he's worked on some pretty high-profile Thanksgiving's. So, I worked at this restaurant that was along the parade route for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Oh, my gosh. We're not talking about Santa Claus. It's cool-aid man presented by Crack.

Well, he's left his pineapple under the sea and has traded it for flying high above the parade. There he is, it's SpongeBob SquareFans. So, for their one year, I had to cook almost 80 turkeys. 80? Yeah, 80 turkeys. And that's not even counting the size and the mash and the stuffing.

“And that was a light year. The year prior, I think it was, they needed 160 turkeys.”

Yeah, can you walk me through what that's like? Like, is there a point where you're just like, "Oh, my gosh, how do I manage this? Let me pull a bear and lock myself in the freezer." And just a lot of crying yourself to sleep at three in the morning. Yeah, sure. But it's all about planning. Just like Thanksgiving at home, Thanksgiving in a restaurant is all about planning.

Yeah, if this is someone's first time doing the turkey or they're trying to redeem themselves

from a turkey fail from a prior year, what are some tips they can use to do this successfully? Right, a very solid game plan. Take a piece of paper, write out everything you need to make, write out approximately how much time it's going to take. Write out if it needs to go into the oven, if so, what temp and how long. And from there, you kind of are building a puzzle.

So, things come out hot at the same time and you're not stuck waiting for potatoes. There's nothing worse than just waiting for potatoes because I feel like often at home when we're just having dinner, we're waiting for potatoes. And when it comes to your turkey, low and slow is your friend. So you want to cook it in a really, really low oven until the different parts of your turkey are at the temp that you're looking for.

And then you're going to pull it out crank your oven up and then you're going to glaze your bird or you're going to face it in some butter and then throw it back into the oven so that skin is nice and crisp.

“Okay, I think people discount turkey a lot, it gets a bad rap, you know, people think it's dry, flavorless, are they just not doing it right?”

Do you have a case for the turkey? I do. Who does not love a turkey club? People are eating turkey clubs you're around and no one's complaining. So, I do think turkey is a difficult meat to cook because it is so lean, which means the margin for error is quite small,

but if you take the necessary precautions, if you're brining your turkey, which I 100% suggest that you do, you can wet and brine, which means you put it in like a salted solution for a certain amount of time, or you can dry brown, brine, which is a lot easier because you can just take your turkey, shower it and some salt, throw it into your fridge, uncovered for up to two, three days. And then that guarantees that your turkey will be seasoned, you have a bigger buffer for moistness and tenderness, and it's just turkey needs all the help it can get.

But what if things go sideways and you're stuck in the kitchen with a mess? Who are you going to call?

“Butterball turkey talk line. This is Gwen. Can I help you? Butterball?”

As in the company that says it sells about a third of all Thanksgiving turkeys.

Don't panic. We're here to help you. What's the problem? I'm already issue or what is your question because I know that we can help you solve it. Gwen Carlisle is a food scientist and she's been on the line. Everything's giving for the last 13 years. The wildest call I think I've gotten is these people put their turkey in the sink and they didn't realize that the sink stopped or got stuck under the wing of the turkey. So they roasted the turkey with the sink stop or under the wing and they called me to see if it was safe to eat.

I don't know, world is actually really funny. All the whole family was on my speaker phone and I was talking to, you know, the whole family. I mean, we get calls about can I call my turkey in a hot tub. Somebody left their turkey outside in a snow bank. It's snowed and then they couldn't find it. We have 50 people here on Thanksgiving day just ready and waiting to answer anything they can throw at or so we do our best.

“What do people get wrong about cooking a turkey every single year? Like what are the greatest hits of turkey issues?”

Well, our number one question that we get every year is. So turns out I have no idea how to throw this giant turkey. Fying is a very important prep step in the process of getting your turkey ready to go into the oven. We recommend flying it in your refrigerator on a pan with paper towels like a cited pan to catch any of the drippings or something if it comes out of the package. So, if you talk about four pounds every day that you hold that turkey. So if you have a 20 pound turkey, you're looking at like five days.

They can do a cold water, fall method and that's just keeping the turkey in the packaging, some urgent cold water. Change it every half hour and that'll fall one pound every half hour. And that's just a quick song method that can help you finish your turkey to get it thought or get it started and kick started because sometimes they take a while to get moving.

“Hi, hi. So I've been cooking this forever and it's still not done yet. What do we do?”

And I'm like, well then, okay, let's get our meat thermometer out. Why don't you check it while I'm here? Tell me what temperature it is. And then they might be surprised that either it is done or it's got some more time to cook. But these are the types of things that we try to problem solve with people so that whatever they think they're panicking about is actually a solvable problem. What do you recommend for people who call at the 11th hour who are like. It's Thanksgiving morning and everyone's here and my turkey is ruined. Everything is ruined.

First off, you know, we wanted to be lovely and perfect in all these things, but odds are, you know, your turkey is fine.

It's not exactly what you envisioned or it's not this, you know, Norman Rockwell painting of a turkey that doesn't mean it's not delicious. There are some great turkeys that I've made that they just, you know, they weren't the most beautiful turkey but they're fine. I think just don't panic. People want that Norman Rockwell painting of a turkey, but how did it become such a Thanksgiving stable in the first place? Why this particular protein has such a hold on us? That's up next. Support for today explained comes from Vanta. Every new tool your team signs up for every vendor that turns on AI features every new integration.

Has a chance for something to go wrong and most security programs weren't built for AI's pace of growth and to Vanta.

Vanta is a top agentic trust platform used by over 16,000 fast moving companies like ramp, cursor and Harvey to ensure they're always audit ready.

And now Vanta is helping companies like yours watch for the risks that show up between audits across your vendors, your AI tools and your whole environment. How the Vanta agent works like a 24/7 GRC engineer in the background finding issues, drafting fixes for you and cutting vendor assessment time by up to 50%. Whether you're a fast growing startup or a global enterprise vanta is here to help you automate your security and compliance and earn and prove trust you can get started today at vanta.com/explained that's V-A-N-T-A dot com/explained.

Support for the show comes from chime ding dong chime is changing the way people bank by offering rewarding fee free banking. They're not like traditional old banks that charge you overdraft and monthly fees and they have thousands of fee free ATMs because you shouldn't pay to get your own money.

Your savings can go faster to a 3.75 APY which is 9 times higher than the national average. Take that national average. Chime is not just smarter banking. It's the most rewarding way to bank. Join the millions who are already banking fee free today.

“You can go to chime.com/explained that is chime.com/explained it only takes a few minutes to sign up. Chime has a thin tech not a bank banking services for my pay and chime card provided by chimes bank partners.”

For more information on APY rates my pay spot me in travel books go to chime.com/disclosures.

We're back it's explaining to me I'm JQ so now we know how to successfully get the turkey onto the table unfrozen. But what's up with our national obsession with this bird and does big turkey have something to do with it? To find out I call Troy Bickham. I'm a professor of history and director of the Melbourne Glass Clock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University.

There's a lot of ways including the food that was eaten. Did the pilgrims actually have a huge turkey in the middle of their table? No.

Really? We have two eyewitness accounts describing things giving and they were not interested in describing the food. I think we know for certain that they ate was vinescent because they want to know what brought a number of deer with them. That would have been a big deal for them and we were noting in their diaries, primarily because vinescent was kind of royal food, or the food of their aristocracy in England, so to have something like that was a super luxury.

“Did Turkey become a staple of Thanksgiving? Why aren't we all eating vinescent this time of year?”

Turkey's cheap is the main reason. It's a big festival bird. Pretty much any major feast or festivals particularly that time of year when they're in abundance if you're sort of in the forest of Maine you can see them all over the place. It would have been something relatively cheap and easy to put on the table. Every agricultural society has a harvest festival. It doesn't matter if we're talking about the ink of the Maya, the ancient Israelites or whoever. They all have harvest festivals and that harvest festival sort of percolates.

In different parts of the country, there are different Thanksgivings on different days as the U.S. expands west. Different states have different days for Thanksgiving. It doesn't become a national holiday really until the time of the Civil War. That's largely the work of Sarah Hale. She's primarily known as Mary had a little lamb. She wrote it. She's a children's writer and she was the editor of Goaties, which was a ladies magazine that was very wildly distributed. I just for women of the day. And so she and a number of people in the early 19th century were kind of looking around for days to celebrate a traditional family values.

So the idea that Americans were Christian, family oriented and also the idea of Thanksgiving be a holiday of unity because the country's increasingly divided. Now needs national recognition and authoritative fixation only to become permanently an American custom and institution. Start to let a writing campaign women start writing in to their congressmen to try to make an national holiday doesn't really get going. And until the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln signs an end-law in 1863. To set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our magnificent father, who dwelleth at the heavens.

That's really when Thanksgiving, the way that we might imagine it today, really starts, really takes off. I could set after the Civil War.

And that's the same time. It's not until 1870 that Christmas and the Fourth of July become national holidays too. So Thanksgiving's first.

And by that time, the Turkey had become the major celebration bird. It placed itself really well. So you could read a newspaper, say you're in Charleston in 1870, and you have this holiday Thanksgiving.

“You're not familiar with it. So you read in the newspaper and it's sort of going to what do I do?”

The Turkey must be wisely chosen well-cooked and properly served. And so there's packed full recipes where people from New England say this is how you make stuffing.

The same thing with the Fourth of July, Christmas, everything else. It's about nationalism. And it times itself really well because it's also about the same time that we start seeing the industrialization of food production. And so once that's in, it's kind of over. Because the companies take over very quickly, the idea of promoting turkeys. It's flavorful, golden brown turkey is the crowning glory of your holiday dinner table. Thanksgiving is no time to fool around this year, better buy butterball.

Or you could get a turkey of a turkey.

“And scientists really took off during the Great Depression because meat was more expensive, right? So what do you do?”

Well, you know, what's all have pumpkin pie, let's get out potatoes, all the different kinds of casseroles. All the stuffing becomes, like beforehand, there was stuffing. It wasn't unusual to have stuffing. But it really takes off during the Great Depression because bread's cheap. And you kind of, you know, want to stretch it out as much as possible. Libby's wants to sell. It's condensed milk. And so in the early 20th century, it starts promoting pumpkin pie recipes. When it's as heavy as they be on the label label label, nothing's better, better, better.

But it buys a pumpkin pie, canning company, and then it promotes the pumpkin. That's very American, like, okay, let's make a supply chain to support this holiday. Absolutely. And then Macy's jumps in with its Thanksgiving day parade because it's trying to kick off shopping. But Macy's 56th annual Thanksgiving day parade holiday, treat for children everywhere. So like, you know, when this Christmas start while, you know, now it starts some time in July, but back then Christmas was marked by the Macy's day parade.

And it's like, okay, it's gotten shot. Why do you think this glamorized image of a full golden turkey on Thanksgiving has lasted this long? I don't know. I mean, it looks good. I was looking at some data in from a coin to the food drug administration and the government statistics. About a fifth of our turkeys are eaten, fifth of turkey is eaten on Thanksgiving day. It's an abdomen when someone pulls out this enormous thing of a Norman Rockwell picture of Thanksgiving.

It's this enormous bird comes rolling out, puts them down. It's pretty impressive. And it takes on the flavor of stuff and puts you get all the side dishes.

“It's also an adaptable holiday. I think that's what makes it work.”

It's a bunch of people getting together and bringing food and breaking bread to with each other once a year. I mean, it doesn't have a religious connotation. They've tried. It doesn't really stick with it. Any culture can be grateful to eat for family or friends or whatever is in your life. And then fall asleep and watch football, I guess or whatever. It's like that. Right as we do.

Oh, yes. The great Thanksgiving tradition of falling asleep in front of the TV.

But there's something about this quintessentially American ritual that always leaves you feeling kind of gross.

What if I told you that it's possible to have a Thanksgiving without feeling terrible afterwards? That's next. Support for today explained comes from select quote. It's easy to fall down the rabbit hole on the internet over researching restaurant reviews vacuum cleaners or hotels. But when it comes to turn life insurance sometimes we just go with the first quote we find and call it a day. Not with select quote they do the homework for you.

With select quote getting life insurance is fast free and easy the whole process takes about 15 minutes answer a few questions. They're agents shop the carriers for you and you get your quote tailored to your specific situation even if you've got high blood pressure or diabetes.

For over 40 years select quote has helped more than 2 million Americans secure more than 700 billion in coverage.

Their goal is simple help you find a term life insurance policy that fits your needs and budget. They do the shopping for you so you could save time and money they even have 11,000 reviews on trust pilot rated excellent. You can get your free quote it's let quote.com/explain that's let quote.com/explain that's let quote.com/explain to they shop you save. Support for the show comes from mint mobile. When you're buying a new phone transparency is everything.

“That's why mint mobile's wireless plans have no catches.”

They just offer high speed 5G data and great coverage. Right now plans are $15 per month and that includes their unlimited plan. We have a colleague here at Vox who's on mint and he's a fan.

He says he loves that it saves him so much money and that he's never run into an issue where his data might be limited.

To get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month go to mint mobile.com/explain it to me.

Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mint mobile.com/explain it to me. That's it there's no catch. A front payment at $45 for three month, $90 for six month or $180 for twelve month. Plannerquired, $15 per month equivalent. Taxes in fees extra, initial plan term only.

Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot, capable device required. Availability, speed and coverage varies. See mint mobile.com. It's explained to me I'm Jake Hugh and it's great to know the history but when it comes down to it,

what are we really here for on Thanksgiving? Eating.

You have some turkey and some sweet potatoes, a couple of rolls, a second slice of pie.

Maybe a little bit more wine and pretty soon you're waking up from a nap feeling not good. Time to call the doctor. Dr. Tricia Piss Rica, I'm a gastroenterologist. And I run a laboratory at Harvard Medical School of studying the gut brain connection. And on Thanksgiving, you may find her working a shift at the hospital.

The classic thing we see is maybe four or five hours after dinner time, like getting close to midnight early in the morning. People coming in with food stuck in their throats, like stuck in their esophagus. Oh my God! It's from what?

On the turkey. And so then we ended up doing like indoscopies at midnight to kind of help get some of that food out. But so lesson learned here for everyone who's listening is to chew really carefully. People often eat a lot of salt like high salt foods. Oh, thanksgiving.

And they have a heart attack, like in a heart failure. That tends to show up on Thanksgiving.

I see, you know, you never know what you're going to get.

But I hope everybody has a healthy and safe holiday. And enjoy foods that they like, but maybe like slowly and in moderation. Yeah, so I want to figure out how to get the most out of the day. So let's start at the beginning, you know.

“What are things you can do early in the day to set yourself up for success?”

What is our Thanksgiving warm-up? Yes. Oh, I love it. Well, you know, yeah, I first have to decide. Are you a family that turkey trots together or not?

And I'll say like the argument in favor of a turkey trot. Is that doing a small workout like that? Like, even if you're someone who's going to walk the whole 5k, like it will actually set you up for success. Digestive-wise. The rest of the day.

And that's because any form of exercise primes the GI system. It gets the colon just start contracting. You're going to get things moving. You're also going to release some endorphins and do ketnabinoids. Those can really buffer you emotionally later in the day as family stress kind of fills up.

So I do think that like, if you're a turkey trotter, props to you. If you're not a turkey trotter, I tend to help people that

“the best way to approach Thanksgiving is not to starve yourself all day.”

So that when the big meal is upon you, you can eat as much as you want. That actually backfires. The more hungry you are, the more quickly you eat. Because you're like, so hungry, let me get all of this food in. And you end up feeling like suddenly super, super bloated, super, super ill.

Because it takes about 20 minutes for food to reach your small bowel and then signal to your brain that you're full. So if you scarf all your food down, you're going to like really overshoot what you should be eating in that moment. I actually like like the approach my family does this. We graze like we kind of start the appetizer, start eating early in the afternoon. And I think the slow graze, the sheep approach actually helps so that by the time you get to Thanksgiving dinner itself,

you're not like totally starved. Okay, so my official title as family taste tester is actually a very smart idea. 100, I mean whoever is taste tester on Thanksgiving has like won the family lottery. So say now I'm at the buffet, you know, the aunts uncles, little cousin, whoever they're behind me waiting in line. Just as hungry as I am, I'm building my plate.

“What's the game plan? What should I be putting on my plate?”

Yes, well, okay, I will say it all depends on your goals here. So there's like one group of people who will say, thanksgiving day, I'm going to eat what I want in the quantities that I want and don't get in my way. And to those people, I say, you know what, it's a holiday, enjoy yourself, live your best life.

If your goal is to not feel ill afterwards, which is like common to all of us, then what I would say is to put an appropriate amount of vegetables and protein on your plate and eat those things first.

I mean, at least half the plate should be filled with those things. In real life, we usually want to center the protein and the veggies on the plate and like the carbohydrate is like a fourth of that plate. You don't have to go so hardcore, but at least half of it.

And you're actually going to spike your blood sugar a little bit less than if you eat the exact same thing, but in a different order.

You ate the pasta first, you ate the biscuit first, your blood sugar is going to spike a lot more than if you did it the other way around.

Okay, so save the mac and cheese on the sweet potatoes for less than.

“Think of that as like part of the treat, you know, and actually this has been shown in several studies, why do you think we all are bloated?”

We've eaten everything we can possibly eat yet. We so often have room for dessert. Well, it's good, right? Like somehow we're like, oh, you know, that part of my stomach is still empty. We can still do it. Well, it's because you can become satiated and full to just certain types of sensory experiences. So if your whole plate is savory, your body is still going to be willing to crave something sweet, but if you incorporate something sweet into your plate early on, like part of the dinner, like maybe you take the cranberry sauce.

You actually might say, I don't need two slices of pie after this. I'll be like totally fine with just a few bites.

“Again, unless what you want in life is two slices of that pie, because it's your favorite pie in the world, I'm not going to rip that from your hands on a holiday.”

Earlier in this episode, we focused on turkey. You know, some people skip it. We got our vegetarian. We got our people who think it's overrated, but a lot of us load up on it is there such a thing as too much turkey. Well, you know, there was this older thinking or this like maybe old wives tale that turkey can make you really sleepy, and that's because it contains these compounds called trip to fans. That's kind of been debunked. The reason people feel sleepy after a big Thanksgiving meal is because of all the simple carbs that we're loading up on like we're eating a ton of pasta, reading a ton of biscuits and like gravy and all these things.

So I don't think turkey is the issue. If that's the majority of your meal, and it means that you're eating like a little bit less of the chocolate pecan pie, I think that's perfectly healthy. Although, again, that's my favorite thing in the world.

Just chocolate pecan pie. Second only to corn pudding. So I don't deny myself those things I Thanksgiving.

Okay, aside from the turkey, another thing that is plundiful at Thanksgiving tends to be alcohol, you know, wine add dinner, beer with the football games, maybe a little bit of whiskey when you're playing dominoes or spades with your cousins. How does drinking on Thanksgiving affect how you feel after that meal? Alcohol delays how quickly your stomach can empty food into your small bowel. So if you're priming your stomach to already be sluggish and then you're walking into the biggest meal of your life, you're setting yourself up for failure.

So I would try to avoid the alcohol beforehand. If you want to have a glass of something, go for it, maybe a little bit after the meal or after you've eaten. Really the best thing you can do to help speed up your stomach is go for a short walk after the meal. And I could that I think whether you're a turkey trout family or not. Going for the post meal walk is the best way to get your stomach moving, get things moving, keep your blood sugar down and it really helps you deep-loat like all of your intestinal gas will start to dissipate. If you go for even just like a 10-15 minute walk.

“Okay, so like if you overindulge at the meal, is that what you should do? Yes. But the other thing I will tell people is that like my family tradition is we like to watch planes trains and automobiles after dinner, obviously.”

You're the guy who tried to get my cab. I knew I knew you, yeah. If you sit up straight, you are able to expel gas more efficiently than if you're lying down. So at very least don't lie down right after the meal. If you can't go for the walk at least have some good posture in your chair or on the couch. Thanksgiving is kind of like the Olympics of eating. Do you think the way we're eating on Thanksgiving is holding us back at all? Do we need to adjust that? Yeah, as a society. You know, I think Thanksgiving is like actually like what brings the best of us out.

There's been so many studies about how we are becoming more disconnected and lonely and one key to happiness and longevity is just having a meal with family. Thanksgiving is like one time where we all do that really consistently. So I don't want to break Thanksgiving at all. I just want people to not feel sick and gasy afterwards and I think they're small tweaks we can make to so that that part doesn't happen. Happy Thanksgiving. You too. I want to go watch Mike Steve Martin now. By the way, you know, when you're telling these little stories, here's a good idea. Have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener.

That's it for explaining it to me this week. Pro tip from my kitchen yours. Spatch Cocker Turkey. We're off next week for the holiday. In the meantime, we'd love to know what do you want us to explain about the world we live in. Give us a call at 1-800-618-855 or send an email to [email protected]. Also, if you love this podcast and other Vox content, we're having a sale. When you become a Vox member, you get a ton of perks.

This episode was produced by Ariana Hospital. It was edited by Ginny Lotton, fact checked by Melissa Hirsch, and engineered by Adrian Lily.

“I'm your host, John Flynn Hill. Thank you so much for listening. I'm thankful for you. Bye.”

I'm having at least one turkey club with my leftovers, but depending on how much I have leftover, I can get a little saucy.

I can get a little crazy. There's nothing wrong with like a little turkey pot pie. There's nothing wrong with a little turkey fajitas. Let me tell you.

“I did that last year for the first time. Oh, that would have never crossed my mind.”

Dark meat slice it up nice and thin. Some onions, some peppers, your favorite taco seasoning.

Dust that all on top. Give it a nice sear on a hot cast iron with a little bit of oil into some tortillas with all the fixons. It is fantastic. Support for the show comes from KPMG. In any organization disruption is inevitable, but struggling through it doesn't have to be. The KPMG adaptability index is your blueprint for building capabilities to handle what comes next. It uses real data to look at how your culture, strategy, and partnerships all work together to help your business thrive. Stop reacting and start adapting. Visit kpmG.com/us/adaptability to explore the adaptability index and pulse surveys today.

Support for this show comes from Harvey AI. The future of law is a gentic, not just tools that assist, but AI agents that navigate complex matters.

“That's why Harvey created agents that can do the work from end to end. They build a plan, pull from secure data sources, run sub agents in parallel, and draft the work product ready for your review.”

So you delegate the work and on the judgment. Trusted by more than 60% of the Am law 100 in leading Fortune 500 legal teams, Harvey is the AI operating system designed specifically for legal work. Harvey AI tailored for law. Learn more at Harvey.ai.