Inevitably it happens, you go to your grandmother's house for Thanksgiving or Christmas or [insert your nationality's holiday here] whatever and you share a meal.

You all get dished up and do your thing, then dig in-only to find that the white meat is dry, and the dark meat isnt much better. Many times i've had this problem, but we can learn to adapt.

First of all, dont expect the meat to be juicy and delicious when you bite in, expect it to be beef jerky. I say expect because when you lower your standards, what you get is far superior. It really is a psychological thing in the end. Cliche i know, 'lol lower the standards!!1!!' but it does work.

Second, cranberries. Almost everyone agrees that cranberries go with anything, because noone eats them with anything besides holiday meals. If you get a very dry piece of meat on your plate, scoop up some cranberries (whole, not the jelly) and continue to chew with the meat. It really does taste good, or at least different, from what you are doing.

Note; if your family is against the awesomeness that is cranberries, high fat nasty gravy is your backup.

Third, water. I know this seems obvious, and you're wondering why i even posted it, but think of it this way; This stuff was cooked for hours and all its moisture was removed very very slowly. If you have a bit of moisture in your mouth and are willing to actually CHEW your food all is well, it's a bit more tolerable.

Have any survival stories, when it comes to family meals?

im glad my mom cooks some mean holiday meals, never had this problem

Thankfully my family seems to do pretty well when it comes to holiday cooking. Had a girl over yesterday for the great meal and I was pretty fucking worried the turkey, among other things I'd cooked, wasn't going to come out great. Worries begone! Everything was perfect.

People make dry turkeys because they cook them for like 6 hours. It really doesn't take that long.

*ObZ

Add the dedicated avoidance it must take to not baste your turkey every one in a while, and we might as well be eating dehydrated meat!

I thought this thread would be something sexual

It's for this reason I've always found Thanksgiving to be a most depressing holiday.

Gravy. Just use gravy.

Turkey sucks, Thanksgiving sucks, gravy sucks, cranberries suck. There are no solutions.

Lol, i've never had to worry about this thankfully. This year my girlfriend ended up doing all the cooking, and the turkey was juicy to the point where it practically jizzed all over the plate upon the first cut. Then again, she used some sort of white wine on it as she was cooking it, not quite sure what it was but much better than the conventional - 'get a turkey, stuff it with stuffing mix out of a box, cook it for 9001 hours"

I prefer my way...

It's not boil-in-the-bag army food. Now whilst the BITB food kicks arse, it doesn't compare to fresh cooked food. But once you have eaten that stuff followed by biscuits brown for afters, any lump of meat is fucking great!

Moist or dry...I'm fucking eating it!

I think you might've just ruined my Thanksgiving 2009.

i feel sorry for all of you who have to sit through dry turkey. my protip is to cover the breast section with slices of thick bacon half way through the cooking process. this helps retain moisture.