Top up Your Thanksgiving Turkey With Ham
As a kid, I never went to a little Thanksgiving. My mother is the oldest of seven children, and when we weren’t driving to Mississippi to be with her family, we broke the wishbone with a completely different family (Kawons), bringing the number of children in our house to seven (everyone is hungry … mostly teenage girls). The kavones brought turkey, my mom cooked the ham, and then we played one of those detective story games .
Like most of the things my family did when I was younger, I didn’t realize that not every family serves ham in addition to their turkey, but I think this is a practice that everyone should adopt, especially if your family is large ( but only if they eat pork, obviously). The reasons are clear, but I will present my version anyway.
It’s easy to make ham delicious
A delicious turkey can be cooked, but that requires planning, slaughter, and care. A ham that has already been cooked requires much less of this. Ham is not made from lean turkey meat (which is the dumbest meat), but from fatty, salted, jerky pork (which is one of the best types of meat), so everything turns out much better right away. The ham comes to you already cooked and tasty, so the only task you have is to heat it up to 130 ℉, which can be done in a slow cooker, in sous vide mode, or in a simple oven. Ham is much more convenient than turkey, which is good, because then you have more hands to make more mashed potatoes and corn casserole .
Variety is very good
If you are anything like me, you worry about running out of food, which you never really had, but this is such a terrible concept that it hangs deep in your brain, forcing you to cook more than necessary in any given holiday. (Also awful: cooking the exact amount of food so that there are no leftovers.) Adding ham, which again is very easy to make and tastes better than turkey, means you can cook and cook a smaller turkey and still eat a lot leftovers, which means your turkey will cook faster and more evenly, which means you’re less likely to cry at some point on Thanksgiving. (My main goal is to prevent any of you from crying on Thanksgiving over anything food-related.) Ham also has a super-salty flavor that you might need to break up all the creamy starch on your table.
This is what people want
Apart from my dad and maybe a few other dads, nobody likes turkey. If you really like turkey, the rest of the time you will cook its thighs or breast. (If you notice yourself typing “I REALLY LIKE TURKEY” in the comments, stop for a moment and think; I think you will find that you are someone’s father.) People need turkey for optics and nostalgia, but what they really are want (but are afraid to ask for) salty, fatty, jerky, and glazed ham because it tastes (again) better . Also, think about leftovers – the leftover sandwich is immediately added with a slice of ham just like any other breakfast. It’s also worth considering a ham bone, which can be used in various dishes or soups, or simply added to a pot of beans in which it infuses the pork with kindness. But not only beans will be added to pork. Ham will fill your Thanksgiving with delicious pork. In the words of Queen Ina, “How bad could it be?”