You could say Thanksgiving has been my Super Bowl since I was around 13 years old.
For those of us in the business of Thanksgiving — food writers and editors, grocery store workers and the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line operators — this is our season. But unlike in a sports game, there’s no winning or losing. As the nearsighted student who always got hit in the face by the football at recess, I found a lot of purpose in this holiday from a young age because it’s the one day that celebrates another kind of athlete: the cook.
As a child of South Korean immigrants, I was put in charge of my family’s Thanksgiving when I was a teenager. In those early years, if I wanted to eat a turkey dinner and participate in the tradition, I had to learn how to cook it myself because my Korean parents didn’t know how.
This meant that growing up, my cousins and I would do all the shopping, the cooking and the cleaning while the adults caught up in the other room over soju and wine. It was an annual role reversal that gave our family a new tradition, one that bonded us closer to what was still, for some of the older generation, a new country.
Now, as an adult, Thanksgiving holds weight for me professionally, too: It’s my favorite time of year to be a food writer. I’ve learned in this line of work that so much quirky American history, rooted in the innovations of home economists, can be gleaned from these dishes that many of us take for granted year to year. Taking a closer look at them can help us not only cook them better, but also understand why we eat them.
Since July, for instance, I’ve been lugging a portable blue ice cooler around the city to transport frozen turkeys from the store to my apartment. When my editors assigned me the Food section’s turkey column this year, I knew the first thing I needed was more space (tiny Brooklyn kitchen and all). My cooler was a lifeline while I worked on a recipe, roasting bird after bird and learning everything I possibly could about Thanksgiving turkey.
Every year at The Times, I spend months just like this — researching, reporting and lugging home heavy groceries to create one new Thanksgiving recipe that honors tradition while hopefully adding something fresh to the canon, a new perspective. This annual sprint is one of the main reasons my pants fit a little more tightly in the summer and the fall. My cooking skills get better, of course. My understanding of the world grows a little, too.
Last year, I interviewed the family of Dorcas B. Reilly, the home economist who invented the green bean casserole, and developed a version that honored her original creation. In 2022, I cooked 20 different stuffings (or dressings, depending on where you’re from) to learn as much as I could about the dish and to create my ultimate recipe. In 2021, I spent months replicating the unbreakable creaminess of Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese; I discovered through my reporting that it was the platonic ideal of the dish for many children of immigrants who didn’t grow up with the homemade version.
On Thanksgiving Day, when readers start cooking their creations and tagging me on Instagram, I get to digitally peer into their kitchens and dining rooms while stirring my own pots and pans with my partner and my dog. For a cook, it’s hard not to feel like the quarterback on a day like today.
As 91 percent of Americans barrel toward turkey dinners and pie spreads this afternoon, I’m comforted by one last thing: Today I get to cook for myself.
Many food writers in my circle dread and skip the holiday altogether. By November, they’ve already eaten their share of turkey, pie and mashed potatoes for work. But I relish the creative ritual of Thanksgiving — a day dedicated to cooking — and look forward to getting lost in my head and my hands while making only what I want to eat. Any new revelations in the kitchen that day usually become pitches for next year’s Food section.
Ironically, I haven’t spent Thanksgiving Day with my family since I became a food writer nearly a decade ago. I always work the holiday shift. But you can bet I was on the phone with my mother last night, walking her through the turkey recipe I taught her. And when I go home for Christmas, I’ll cook for my family the feast I didn’t get to make for them today. All of the cousins will be there, this time with their own children and their own families.
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