College Essentials: How to Carve a Turkey

I went to a lovely Thanksgiving dinner last night. At some point while eating the turkey, it struck me: "I'm not in college anymore." One might wonder what brought on this sudden realization: a well-carved turkey. In my sophomore year of college, a friend showed me how to brine a turkey and how to make stuffing. After that, my junior and senior year, Cynthia (and Cerinthus) and I threw Thanksgiving bashes together. The food we made was pretty incredible, if I do say so myself, and the parties were always effervescent and enjoyable, but the problem we always ran into was that there was never one person at the party who knew how to carve a turkey. We always tried to carve it, but we ended up just sort of hacking bits off of it.

This year, one of the hosts actually knew how to carve a turkey and I realized that I was out in the real world again. I thought, after having a properly carved turkey, that I should learn how to do it. Luckily, the New York Times came to my rescue, providing an instructional video. For anyone who is in college or on the way, I seriously suggest learning to carve a turkey now. You never know when you might be the hero of some Thanksgiving party and you will always get invited back.




For Christmas dinner, my mom and I always brine a turkey together, which is fabulous fun. The best part, though, are the delicious turkey quesadillas we get to make with the leftovers! Both the brining recipe and the quesadilla recipes are forthcoming in December.