Welcome to Burning Questions, The Takeout’s video series in which we answer all your culinary quandaries and ponderings.

A lot of people cherish their Thanksgiving leftovers almost as much as they do Thanksgiving dinner. But turkeys are big, and so is the rest of the yearly spread. The average turkey weighs in at about 30.5 pounds (damn), but even the small ones are bound to yield a ton of extra meat. You know what question’s coming…

Hey there, Takeout readers. To those observing Thanksgiving, we hope you have a fantastically relaxing day. To those who have to work on the holiday, we hope against hope that you are treated cordially by anyone and everyone you encounter. For those cooking anything from a snack to a feast, we wish you nothing but the…

As you’d imagine, even though we’re not nestled in an office near each other’s desks, we’re still making small talk, just over Slack instead. We talk about pretty much whatever, like drunk squirrels, new pairs of glasses, and we share a lot of photos of our pets, too. The usual.

Potatoes grow under the ground, in dirt, which makes them dirty. (This is science.) If you are going to eat the whole potato—skin and all—you should wash it beforehand. Baked potatoes, roasted potatoes, skin-on fries—all of these spuds need a good scrubbing as a first step, before any further prep work or cooking is…

I made this point last week, and I stand by it this week: Tayshia is a god-tier Bachelorette. In the seventh week of this very strange season, she got to do the angry speech about how disappointed she is that every Bachelorette gets at some point, stirred some shit while being convincingly outraged that anyone would…

Who doesn’t love a nice, happy animal story to distract from the fact that we’re all about to be chowin’ down on a bunch of turkeys tomorrow? Moment of silence, please. This story from The Sussex Countian tells the tale of a lone chicken picked up by animal control and given a chance to live a life of peace and…

It’s my first time not going home for Thanksgiving, and since my boyfriend and I are essentially merging households with another couple for the winter, we’re spending the day with them. Several of us, myself included, are Thanksgiving traditionalists, so we knew we wanted a turkey—but we’re also bad to the bone, which…

I’m assuming it’s not just me, but every time I see a jokey tweet from a big food brand, I always wonder who’s actually behind it. Is it a hipster with funny glasses and an interesting haircut? Perhaps it’s a giant group of advisors behind a mega advertising corporation? Is it a sentient artificially intelligent robot…

You can fight it all you want, but the science doesn’t lie: we humans are greedy creatures who love shiny delights. Specifically, gold foil-wrapped chocolates with “ornate labels.” At least, according to research conducted by food scientists in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences and cited in Science Daily.…

If you’re the type of person who reaches into a cabinet and removes one of a dozen identical glass tumblers to fill with ice water, well, this article is not for you. This is a discussion for the rest of us, those whose cabinets are a chaotic assemblage of drinkware of varying sizes that don’t fit neatly into rows:…

The current COVID-19-related recommendation against travel means that many of us will be having a solitary Thanksgiving this year. If you have the day off but nowhere to be, here are a few suggestions for comfort eating, drinking, and viewing. You might find that a solo holiday is a great time to follow your own…

Good pots and pans tend to be expensive, and that’s especially true for copper cookware, which looks gorgeous, has a sort of timeless aesthetic appeal, and is often dramatically more expensive than even its high quality stainless steel equivalents. But is copper cookware really better? And if so, why?