Plan ahead to avoid Thanksgiving dinner pitfalls

In 1977, the family and consumer science teacher had recently gotten married and she was living in an apartment on Iowa State University's campus that didn't have a stove.

Van Peursem threw some apple slices inside the 12-pound bird to keep it moist as she cooked it in a bag in the microwave for an hour. She rotated the turkey every 20 minutes.

"My mom said, 'Is it going to be OK?'" she recalled. "Well, yeah. You put a thermometer in it and you check the temperature."

Van Peursem said the turkey turned out great. Her guests loved it.

Each year around Thanksgiving time, Van Peursem's students at East High School cook four turkeys and all the fixings -- mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and homemade buns. They use the leftover meat and bones to make a Hawaiian sundae and stock for soup.

Van Peursem urges first-time Thanksgiving dinner hosts to "keep it simple." You can only have one thing in the oven and that's the bird, unless you have a double oven. She makes sides, such as hash brown casserole or stuffing, in a slow cooker. She also boils food on the stove and asks her guests to bring a dish, preferably salads and desserts to save on refrigerator space.

"Whenever you have a Thanksgiving get-together, you don't make the whole meal, you need to have them bring part of it because your oven is being taken up with the turkey," she said.

Hosts need to plan ahead when it comes to the turkey. Van Peursem said a frozen turkey takes three days to thaw in a refrigerator. If it's not completely thawed, she said you can place the bird in lukewarm water and check it every hour.

"The mistakes that most people make are not checking the cavities. There's always two cavities to check," she explained. "They'll get inside the legs and get the neck out of the stomach area, but then there's another area back behind that you have to check. They forget that one."

Van Peursem doesn't have a special sauce for her turkey; she just takes salt and pepper and rubs in into the inside of the cavity to flavor it. She doesn't baste her turkeys either; she just places them in a bag to bake for 10 to 15 minutes per pound, but never above 325 degrees.

Sometimes, Van Peursem will stuff a bird at home but she won't let her students do it, because "stuffing is so dangerous."

Because of the potential for food poisoning, Van Peursem said you can't stuff a bird the night before and then get up early the next morning and throw it in the oven. She said hot stuffing has to go directly from the stove to the inside of the turkey and then the turkey needs to go immediately into the oven.

"The reason why is because the stuffing does not reach the internal temperature that it needs. Because it was cold in the refrigerator it never actually gets properly hot in the oven and it doesn't heat up to that temperature," she said.

If the meat thermometer reads 165 degrees in the thickest portion of the turkey's breast, Van Peursem said the meat is safely cooked. Since it takes a 12- to 14-pound bird about three hours to cook, she recommends making the turkey the day before.

"Slice it, have it ready to go and all you're doing is putting the pan in the oven to heat it up," she said. "If you're busy and have to carve a turkey and everybody's bringing things and asking questions and you're setting the table, you don't have time to do it."

Homemade bread, Van Peursem said, can be made a week ahead of time. Freeze it and then thaw it.

When making mashed potatoes, she cautions to mash the potatoes before adding milk. Top the potatoes with store-bought gravy, or, she said you can easily make it with chicken broth, cornstarch, water and pan drippings.

Above all, don't stress. Van Peursem said her students don't.

"People just need to relax. I have not had any of my kids not enjoy making the turkey," she said.