turkey school « We are not Martha

Posts Tagged ‘turkey school’

Friday, November 9, 2012

Butterball Cookbook Plus App (and a giveaway!)

In lieu of cocktail Friday (I’m just drinking wine tonight… my week was so crazy/draining that I can’t even handle making a cocktail), I have something else fun to talk about. Turkey. I mean, I was going to wait on this post, but then I realized Thanksgiving is legitimately less than two weeks away. Whoa. How on Earth did that happen? Now I need another glass of wine to come to terms with how fast the weeks have been flying. And maybe a cupcake. Or a pumpkin doughnut.

If you’ve been reading our blog for over a year now, then you know how we experience Thanksgiving every year. Yes, with family and friends… But also with Butterball turkey! We’ve been working with Butterball for 4 years now (holy, that sounds like a ridiculously long time) and we have had nothing but awesome experiences with them. This is the first year we’re not actually going to the Butterball headquarters in Chicago and we’re seriously missing our Butterball buddies like crazy. I can 100% honestly say that the women (and few men!) who we’ve interacted with the past 3 years have been some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Sadly, we won’t get any photos like this in 2012:

But I’m most definitely pulling out my notes and getting my turkey studying on. The classroom is not the only place you can learn… In fact, the kitchen is the best!

OK fine, our Butterball sessions were always in a kitchen anyway, but sometimes I think it’s good to take what you’ve learned and go home and see what you can do with it.

Butterball 2011-3.jpg

Anyway, when you call 1-800-Butterball this holiday season, be sure to tell the lovely ladies that Sues and Chels say hi! And know that they’ll most definitely have all the answers to your questions. BUT if you’re all like, “It’s 2012; why would I pick up the phone and call someone when I need help? There’s got to be a better way,” you’re right. This year, Butterball launched their Butterball Cookbook Plus App ($4.99).

It’s packed with TONS of Thanksgiving recipes (that you can obviously cook year-round) with recipes for everything from brined brown-sugar turkey to breakfast burgers to couscous turkey salad to cake pops. Each recipe has a big vibrant image and super duper easy-to-follow instructions.

One of my very own original recipes is going to be on the app, too. Cannot wait to see that!

You can also easily save recipes to your recipe box and create grocery lists right on the app.

One of my favorite features of the app is the video tutorial feature. Since after 4 years of Butterball University, I still am a horrible mess when it comes to carving a turkey, having this nearby will be a must.

As will the handy dandy conversion charts. AND the fact that lots of the features take voice command, which means you can follow along with your chosen recipe and not have to touch your phone with turkey hands (or whatever the ingredient of the moment is). For me, my phone gets ridiculously covered in frosting all the time.

I love that we’ve been able to see Butterball come such a long way in the last 4 years. Now they have a very active Facebook and Twitter presence and are even on Pinterest. And I’ve been pinning away on their Golden Thanksgiving board And, of course, we’re still blogging away on the Butterball blog! Since I work in and love social media, there’s nothing I love more than seeing a brand do things well. (But really, Butterball’s website is also a tremendous resource).

Butterball Turkey Giveaway!

Want to win a Butterball turkey for your Thanksgiving dinner? OK, so Butterball won’t be popping a turkey in the mail… But they will send you a turkey gift check if you win so you can go out and buy one yourself! All you have to do is leave a comment on this post by Monday November 12 at 11:59 p.m. letting me know what feature you’re most excited for on the Butterball app. For extra entries 1) Follow @wearenotmartha on Twitter and 2) Follow @Butterball on Twitter. Just leave a comment for each extra entry you do. Good luck!!

Now, I hope you’re in the Thanksgiving spirit and already have a Pinterest board filled with all the dishes you’ll be making next week.

To see our past Butterball trips, check out:

Butterball University, 2011

Butterball University, 2010

Butterball University, 2009, pt 1

Butterball University, 2009, book 2

[Sues]

Disclaimer: although I am working closely with Butterball and had my Cookbook Plus app gifted to me, all opinions are 100% mine!

Labels: app, Butterball, butterball univeristy, thanksgiving, turkey school, turkey talkline

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Monday, October 24, 2011

Butterball University 2011

Hello! We’re back from Chicago and proud to say we’ve completed our third year at Butterball University! This year’s trip was a little bit shorter, but we still got our full day in at the Butterball kitchen, getting trained on how to cook turkey many, many different ways. While we’ve learned an endless amount of turkey cooking knowledge each year we’ve attended BBU, I honestly think this year was the best of them all. Everything really seemed to stick and I felt way more familiar and comfortable in the kitchen with the turkeys. I almost wanted to run home and prepare 11 different turkeys using each of the methods! Although I’m pretty sure my apartment building neighbors wouldn’t appreciate it too much if I brought out a turkey fryer (unless I had Masterbuilt’s Indoor Electric Turkey Fryer!). Though they’d probably love if I shared the leftovers.

When we first arrived in Naperville on Wednesday, we met the fabulous Butterball and Edelman team for dinner at La Sorella di Francesca, along with two other bloggers: Zippy from Champagne Living and Heather from Home EC 101. After a day of traveling, we were starving and dug right in to some calamari.

And tomato, basil, and mozzarella.

I enjoyed rigatoni and asparagus…. In fact, the biggest bowl ever. What? We had a full day of turkey cooking ahead of us and I needed to carbo-load (As a non-marathoner, I need a carbo-loading excuse, too. Just give it to me).

And Chels had the delicious pumpkin ravioli, which I snagged a bite of.

Dessert was a heavenly molton chocolate cake with mint chocolate ice cream. We couldn’t resist!

Bright and early the next morning, it was time to head over to the Butterball headquarters and join the ladies of the Turkey Talk Line. Seriously, this is one of the very best days of the year. It’s called Freshman Day and is basically the day when the newer Butterball Talk-Line experts come together and learn and review everything there is to know about cooking turkey. That way, when you call 1-800-Butterball when you’re tying to prepare your Thanksgiving turkey, they can answer every single one of your questions.

We’ve been lucky enough to have the chance to join them for the last 3 years, so we can learn right along with them! Basically, we’re learning all things turkey from the most skilled turkey chefs around.

When we arrived, we spent a little bit of time listening to turkey experts Carol and Marty talk about everything from food safety to thawing to the different methods of cooking turkey.

You may not realize it, but there really is so much to learn when it comes to turkey. One very common phone call the Talk Line ladies get is from people that didn’t realize you need to take your turkey out of the freezer days before you want to cook it. You can’t thaw in 8 hours, like you can a chicken breast! Of course, many other people have questions about what temperature their turkey should be so it’s safe for their guests to eat and what exactly all that information on the Butterball label means.

After refreshing our minds with all the information, it was time to get in the kitchen and start prepping our own turkeys! I’m still obsessed with the easy-open Butterball packaging. It’s, um, actually kind of fun to open.

Like each past year, we were each assigned a cooking method and our very own turkey. This year, I got a moist heat method with the oven cooking bag.

I grew up in a family that practices the dry heat open pan cooking method and before attending Butterball University, I never even realized there were so many different ways to cook a turkey. Now I am much wiser. Anyway, using an oven cooking bag is becoming more and more popular and one reason people like it so much is because it’s a quick cooking method.

Chels’s method was foil wrapped high temperature, which is also a quick cooking method.

After we both prepped our turkeys (including stuffing them… for the experience. And then un-stuffing them!), we got to do a demonstration in front of the whole class.

First I demonstrated how to prepare a Reynolds oven bag (a little bit of flour, some celery and onions) for the turkey, along with Carol.

It was my first time so I had to take a look at the instructions

Then Chels sprayed her turkey with a little vegetable oil and covered it in heavy duty foil.

Into the ovens our turkeys went. Yes, Butterball has a kitchen filled with ovens.

And we were all assigned our very own.

Labeled with the proper temperature and everything.

While everyone’s turkeys were in the ovens, roasters, microwaves (yes, someone microwaved their turkey!), etc. we sat back down and learned about even more turkey cooking methods. This time, we heard all about turkey grilling, frying, and more. We also heard about all kinds of different meat thermometers… Something else I had no idea there were so many options for.

Marty demonstrated some alternatives to roasting racks.

Then it was back to the kitchen to check on our turkeys! My turkey went in at 350 degrees and it took 2 hours and 15 minutes to come to the right temperature. Isn’t that super quick?

Seeing how quickly my turkey roasted, I can see why lots of people like the oven bag method. When it’s Thanksgiving day and you have about a million different dishes vying for the attention of the oven, having your turkey cook so quickly is a great thing.

However, I wasn’t a huge fan of the coloring of my turkey. It wasn’t nearly as golden as many of the others!

Chels’s turkey took even less time in the foil. She was cooking hers at 450 degrees, which is a super high temperature for roasting a turkey. But look at how beautifully golden hers is!

One of our very favorite parts of Butterball University is seeing the whole turkey lineup: everyone’s just cooked turkeys fresh out of the oven!

And all of the lovely ladies who made them.

We went through the lineup and everyone talked about their method, how long their turkey took to cook, and how it looked right out of the oven.

It was really interesting to hear everyone’s different experiences with their turkey. We’re at Butterball University to learn ALL about cooking turkey. So, even though we each had our own method, we still made sure to pay super close attention to what everyone else was doing, too.

But even when the turkeys were cooked, our jobs were not yet complete. We still have to carve those turkeys up! Carving is definitely not my favorite thing about turkey training, but it’s obviously pretty essential if you want to make the most of the turkey and have it looking pretty.

After we all carved our turkeys, it was time to sample the various methods and discuss which ones we liked best.

Time for the great turkey tasting! As usual, I really loved the open pan cooked turkey, but I thought Chels’s foil wrapped was incredibly moist and flavorful for being cooked so quickly. I was also actually very pleasantly surprised by the microwaved turkey. It was strangely flavorful and not dry at all! It’s so crazy to actually taste how different each turkey cooked with a different method tastes.

Then it was back to the airport and home to Boston! Butterball University went by way too quickly this year, but I can’t even tell you how happy we were to be back! It’s always so nice to see everyone and learn from such passionate people. Although we did miss the smiling face of Heather (hi, Heather!), the Brand Manager for Butterball, who wasn’t able to come this year due to other work obligations!

Next up? Chels and I are planning to cook our own Butterball turkey in the coming weeks utilizing everything we’ve learned at Butterball U. What method will we use? Will we stuff the turkey or not? You’ll have to wait and see

In the meantime, you should know that the Butterball Turkey Talk Line opens on November 1 and starting then, you can call 1-800-Butterball with all your questions. In the meantime, you can visit Butterball.com for TONS of great information that will help you make your Thanksgiving (or any turkey dinner) a fabulous success.

Thank you again to everyone at Butterball and Edelman for inviting us to Butterball University and teaching us everything you know. We feel SO lucky! And we cannot wait for Thanksgiving!

[Sues]

Full Disclosure: We were hired to attend Butterball University and are being paid to write on the Butterball Blog. However, all of our opinions are our own and we’re under absolutely no obligation to write any rave reviews of our experiences. We really do feel incredibly lucky and have a great respect for the Butterball brand.

Labels: Butterball, Butterball University, turkey, turkey school, turkey talk-line

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Posts Tagged ‘turkey school’

Butterball Cookbook Plus App (and a giveaway!)

Butterball University 2011