It's been a few years since SFist has reposted local cooking school founder Mary Risley's delightful advice for roasting a Thanksgiving turkey — and it bears repeating in a year when a lot of people may be trying to do this for the first time at home and not with family.
Risley and her now closed Tante Marie's Cooking School posted the video below to YouTube in 2011, and plainspoken teacher that she is, Risley didn't mince words about the traditional Thanksgiving bird.
"Just put the fucking turkey in the oven," she says. "Don't worry about it. Turkey never really tastes good."
It's true that some cooks have methods they swear by to keep a turkey moist, but these are notoriously hard birds to keep from drying out — and Risley just says if you want moisture, that's what gravy is for.
Tante Marie's closed in 2014, but these days Risley is still running the food nonprofit she founded over 30 years ago, FoodRunners. The organization collects food that would otherwise go to waste from restaurants, grocery stores, and events, and transports it to soup kitchens and places that turn it into meals for those in need — and she was featured on an ABC 7 segment back in September talking about how COVID had shut down all the catering event the organization had typically relied on for collecting food waste.