The Tale Of The Traveling Turkey Pan

Written by Jayne Ormerod

Roast turkey is an American tradition, but in my family it goes a bit beyond that.  It has to be roasted in a special turkey pan, one that has been around longer than me (and that’s a long time.)  It’s a behemoth 11x16x9 inches in size and will hold a 28-pound stuffed bird comfortably.  We use it twice a year, and storage of it the other 363 days is a challenge. But we wouldn’t have it any other way.

This is not your average oval-shaped granite roaster.  Our “special” pan is made of aluminum, and despite popular conjecture, we cook our turkey with the lid on.  I guess it is more of a steamed/stewed turkey as it bubbles in its own juices for six to ten hours.  About the last 45 minutes of cooking we remove the lid and continue roasting until the skin is brown and crispy.  It makes the moistest, tastiest, most melt-in-your-mouth turkey ever. And the best gravy ever.  I could drink that gravy out of a coffee mug and be in heaven. My mouth is watering just thinking about it! 

The problem arose when I married a naval officer and we moved to the far side of the country.  Mom had recently passed away and Dad was coming to spend Thanksgiving with us. He expected the traditional feast. I wanted it be to be a Thanksgiving just like mom used to make, but the turkey was gonna have to roast in a disposable aluminum pan. With our miniscule apartment kitchen, I didn’t have room to store something I only used one day a year.

Imagine my surprise when my dad stepped off the plane carrying the family roaster!  He’d held it on his lap the entire way from Cleveland to San Diego. And thus the tradition began. 

Over the years, he alternated spending holidays with my sister and I, and whoever got Dad also got the turkey pan. And no matter where we lived or how far he had to travel, Dad arrived every holiday, humongous family roaster in hand. The other sister would suffer through the dry turkey cooked in a disposable pan.

I shopped tirelessly for a roaster of my own so we, too, could enjoy moist turkey on the non-Dad years.  This was in the days before the Internet, so shopping required actually going into a store and walking all the aisles. It took a few years, but finally, one very lucky day at the old Williamsburg Outlet Malls, I found an aluminum pan of my very own! It was not cheap (at least by my Wal-Mart spending standards) but it’s the best investment I ever made.

I know that deep-frying turkey is all the rage (downside…no gravy!) but I continue to cook our turkey in our family-tradition way.  And I expect when I travel to visit my son, wherever he is stationed, I’ll be bringing that pan along with me. I’ve already ordered my t-shirt: HAVE TURKEY PAN, WILL TRAVEL.

Hope you gobble ’til you wobble this Thanksgiving!    

About the author: Jayne Ormerod is the author of “Secrets” and “The Sniper Sisters” in By the Bay: East Beach Stories. Her story “Write by the Bay” will be in Volume II, to be published in 2017.  For a complete list of Jayne’s other writings, please visit her website.