STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

More The Marcophile

• The Marcophile: See through and listen
• The Marcophile: New signs of good times at the Esplanade
• The Marcophile: Here and around

Share and Enjoy [?]

If your effort at serving the perfect turkey at Thanksgiving fell short of, um, perfection, there is hope.

Christmas is another big day for turkey on the table, which means it’s another chance to do the right thing about and with the dinner bird.

That’s why several telephone hotlines that heat up with people asking questions about preparing a turkey are still on fire (sorry, bad choice of words about meal prep.)

Best known among the turkey hotlines is the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line, which offers advice and counsel from real people, not just recorded tips.

Since Butterball opened its turkey talk line in 1981, it has fielded several million calls, some simple, some complicated and some just plain nuts.

Here are a few of the questions — courtesy of the website Snopes.com, which has a great reputation for debunking myths, lies and other nonsense. So I think we can assume these are true accounts, if Snopes says so!

Many people have called Butterball asking whether they can pop popcorn in the turkey’s cavity during the roasting process. No.

A woman called to ask how to get her dog out of her turkey. The Chihuahua had jumped into the turkey’s cavity and was trapped. The woman shook the bird and tried pulling the dog out but failed. A nice Butterball lady suggested the lady simply cut the opening wider. She did, carefully and the doggie squeezed out.

Turkey experts admit that these birds are not the brightest lights in the barn. One turkey farm owner says it’s true that turkeys are dumb enough to drown by looking up at the rain with their mouths open. But as turkey experts will tell you, the turkeys are not the only dummies in the neighborhood.

The Butterball Talk-Line reports that a man phoned to say that his kitchen stove had broken down with his turkey only half-cooked. He wanted to know whether he could finish cooking the bird in his dishwasher. My guess is it’s not recommended unless you want a really, really juicy turkey on the table, with a slight Cascade aftertaste.

The hotline once took a call from a man who asked how to carve his bird with a chain saw. I guess an electric knife was too girly to suit him.

A woman who called said she had been concerned about bacteria in the bird, so scrubbed it before cooking with bleach and wondered how to get rid of that bleach taste.

One caller said she had a small range and feared the turkey would get larger as it cooked — like bread rising perhaps — and be unable to get out of the stove when fully cooked.

Snopes also quotes the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line about a couple of calls in 1985.

“One lady had her five-pound turkey in the oven 24 hours and asked, did we think it was done. Another wanted to know the best method of re-attaching the thighs and drumsticks when they fall off. The 12-pound turkey had been in the oven since 8 a.m. the previous day.”

The Reynolds Wrap Turkey Tips Line heard from a woman who wanted to know whether she could wrap her turkey in a foil bag and put it in the back window of her car, letting the heat from the sun bake the bird. No.

The Butterball Turkey Talk-Line: 800-BUTTERBALL.

Reynolds Wrap Turkey Tips Line: 800-745-4000.

Another source is the US Department of Agriculture Meat and Poultry Hotline: 800-535-4555.

---

Chris Curle is a former news anchor for CNN and for ABC TV stations in Atlanta, Houston and Washington, D.C. E-mail: chris@chriscurle.com.