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Shoutout to my grandma's handwritten recipe card for saving my Thanksgiving

Had to choose between two turkey brines this year. One was a fancy online recipe with like 15 ingredients and the other was my grandma's old salt and apple cider mix. I went with hers because I found the card stuck in a cookbook. Bird came out perfect, juicy, everyone asked what I did. Anyone else got a family recipe that beats the internet stuff every time?
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2 Comments
andrew646
andrew6461mo agoMost Upvoted
... yeah but @kevin_wells46 I think the real problem is that grandma's recipes were written for a different time. Like back then chickens were smaller and people cooked everything way longer because they were scared of salmonella. So her "bake until it looks done" made sense with a 10 pound bird from the 60s. Now we got these huge butterball turkeys and the timing is all off. I tried my grandpa's roast chicken recipe once and it came out like shoe leather. Had to adapt it to modern ovens and meat thermometers. Still use his spice mix though, that part was timeless.
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kevin_wells46
kevin_wells461mo agoTop Commenter
My grandma's handwritten recipes are the reason I spent three Thanksgivings in a row with dry, bland turkey. Three years I tried her handwritten brine recipe and every single bird came out dry and flavorless. I finally switched to a food blog recipe with 15 ingredients and got the best turkey I've ever made. The internet stuff has actual measurements and tested timings, not "a pinch of this" and "bake until it looks done.
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