Three Things I Like

Thanksgiving edition

Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m sending this out now because it’s basically all Thanksgiving cooking ideas, which might still be useful before tomorrow.

Kenji’s Turkey Video

Kenji Lopez is my go-to guy for cooking advice. He regularly manages to achieve what I, on a really good day, want to do with chess: Identify commonly held beliefs that are dead wrong. He’s contrarian, not just for the sake of it, but because he’s right and he can back it up with evidence.

That’s what I’m trying to do with, for example, my blitz challenge. A lot of people say blitz is bad for chess. Well, let’s get a bunch of people, get them all to play a lot of blitz for a month, and see what happens.

In this video he shows why a lot of typical turkey advice is wrong. For example, the standard roasting pan with high sides is the opposite of what you want, because it blocks heat flow to the parts of the turkey that really need it. A flat baking sheet works much better.

He supports everything with evidence like temperature monitoring and side-by-side tests of different techniques. It all makes sense once you hear it, but goes against conventional wisdom.