To think that roast turkey is the poor relation of the roast dinner family?

[squoosh]

There's a reason most people only consider eating it once a year. Personally I'm happy to snub turkey on Christmas day too.

Turkey is so bland and unexciting, chicken, pork, beef, duck all make a superior roast. I know it's good for feeding large mobs of relatives on Christmas Day and has that nifty effect of inducing drowsiness thus limiting post dinner rows between Aunty Mabel and Uncle Howard's second wife but surely this is the only positive that can be said for it? Is everyone with me on this?

Gobble on ungainly turkey, you're not welcome here.

Order free range from your local butcher, it tastes really lovely, after all it is just once a year and worth the extra money. That is why it was a luxury meal years ago, not ghastly factory farm reared stuff but slow grown all year.
Goose was a traditional michaelmas meal usually served at the end of September.

Order free range from your local butcher, it tastes really lovely, after all it is just once a year and worth the extra money. That is why it was a luxury meal years ago, not ghastly factory farm reared stuff but slow grown all year.
Goose was a traditional michaelmas meal usually served at the end of September.

Sorry... Double post!

Lamb is the King of roast dinners.

Infact, roast lamb is the kind of meats.

And possibly, the king of all foodstuffs ever.

I don't like lamb. It's smelly and fatty.

:o

Depends on both the turkey itself and the way it's cooked.

A decent bird, cooked properly, is absolutely gorgeous and I'd cook it more often throughout the year if whole birds were more easily available. The diced turkey, mince and legs which seem to be the only things available in most places at times other than Xmas are horrid and/or bland.

(A good) roast turkey though is something else - especially the lovely flavoursome thighs and legs, and the "oysters" underneath. I love eating it cold for days after with jacket spuds, bread sauce, piccalilli and cold sausagemeat stuffing.

Beef is best, followed by lamb, then pork with crackling, then gammon then chicken, then duck, goose, turkey, and finally pork without crackling, which is rather pointless.0

Turkey is delicious. I cook mine upside down, so all the juices run in to the breast meat when cooking. I also buy a free range one from the butchers, this does make a difference.

i eat turkey several times a week. its lovely. very tasty. very versatile. yum.

This year we are going for an Indian banquet, and I can't wait no turkey for me

we avoid red meat (high cholesterol) so chicken is our everyday meat and turkey is for special occasions. its such a versatile old bird :)

Oh,thank God OP, someone has stuck their neck out on this one! Turkey is bland, nowhere near as good as a decent free-range chicken and not a patch on a big rib of beef or a goose.
My DH also had turkey all his life at Christmas but flatly refuses to have anything but goose since he met me.

Tbh I just don't really like roast dinners full stop, they smell like farts. If I have to eat one then my favourite would be roast pork with crackling, beef/lamb are okish if I am in the mood, chicken/turkey no ta. We had goose the other year and that was ok, expensive for the amount of meat though.

Think I might insist on an alternative Christmas dinner this year, might prevent Dp disappearing to the kitchen for 90% of the day.

We had a goose last year. It took ages to cook and was bloody heavy. It was lovely though.

YABU. Chicken can be tasty if cooked so it doesn't dry out, and beef with all the trimmings is good too. However, duck and pork are too fatty. Turkey with all the trimmings is delicious!

I brine the Christmas turkey - 1hr for every 1lb. I also roast it upside down to start with and then turn it right way up so the skin gets all nice and brown.

DH is Danish and with the outlaws in town this year I was thrilled when he told them that we were having my Christmas dinner. His mum is a good cook but DH has been on a diet and turkey dinner has far less calories than the duck dinner they have in Denmark.

Turkey is overrated. We never had it growing up (always duck for xmas) and friends would rave about it, and their xmas dinners - which was just a roast as far as i could see (never really get excited about a roast and resent paying for one when out as it's one of the easiest and cheapest meals there is) not a 'special' meal.

I don't think i'd even tried it till i was about 12 and then i was so disappointed. It makes me realise how bland peoples tastes are and what people consider 'special' food being so different from mine (going to someones house for a dinner i am always surprised when served with lasagne or something, that's the kind of thing i do on a Tuesday night for a bog standard meal).

When i had to cook xmas dinner for exPILs i did a norfolk bronze, all wrapped in bacon with 2 different types of stuffing and homemade sausages and it still just felt like a roast chicken to me.

However, i do insist on a bird at xmas (it just feels xmassy) so we have goose, duck or pheasant.

knockknockpenny what do you do with cherry coke in the roast?

Agree. Turkey is rubbish. Roast venison is where it's at. Makes me fart though.

Horatia agree Christmas pud is also horrid. My mum makes it every year we have Christmas and her house, tries to bring some for Christmas at other people, and insists it is a massive treat. No-one else likes it but we're too polite to say directly, although try and dissuade her from making it at random times of year or taking it as her contribution to Christmas at relatives' houses. We are going to see her this weekend and she has made some to have on Sunday for breakfast. Yum.

We have goose on Christmas day I don't like it though so I have turkey.

Depends on the turkey, and what you do with it.

Cheap bird + overcooking = tasteless and dry

Good quality bird + cooked properly = juicy and delicious

I must admit turkey isn't at the top of my list though. I did a bloody huge apple-stuffed salmon wrapped in bacon last Christmas. DH and the kids devoured it like starved wolves - there was nothing left by evening, the great flock of gannets. Roast beef and yorkies also went down very well the previous year. Not sure yet what I will make this year - might be turkey, might not.

Agree with Horatia and thecatsminion about Christmas pudding - ugh. That is one part of the traditional Christmas dinner I can absolutely do without. Nasty stuff. Christmas cake and mince pies ditto for me I'm afraid.

Christmas pudding is quite horrible but Christmas cake is an abomination. Just vile. Mince pies are delicious though. DS1 would eat them every day all year round I think. DS2 just eats the mincemeat and leaves the pastry. Odd child.

Plum pudding (I don't call it Christmas pudding) is lovely.

This is the only exception I make for anything made of dried fruit. Christmas cake is vile, mince pies are vile.

Never cook a whole turkey is my advice....byt the time the legs are done the rest is dry and vile

My butcher will bone and stuff the turkey crown, you end up with a gorgeous and easy to carve joint that is moist and tasty! providing his stupid idiot assistant doesn't mix the order up and give you only a rolled breast