The normal depiction is of a family, sitting around their Thanksgiving table, with the head of the family – or another person – carving the turkey perfectly. Sure, it’s easy to carve some slices from the breast of the turkey but, after that, it gets ugly. You have to pull the legs off and otherwise demolish the bird. Well, that’s exactly what the turkey is for. And, that works for most Thanksgiving dinners but, if you’re serving a crowd, everyone has to have the same thing: hot turkey, carved or pulled off of the bones. What do you do, though, if you have a big group of people, and the first one wants white meat, the next one wants dark meat – but not the whole leg – and someone else secretly prefers the turkey to be cold? You can’t easily flip the turkey over and over, to please everyone, so it can be a challenge. If you prepare a de-boned turkey the day before the Thanksgiving dinner you can give everyone whatever they want.
Bake the turkey just like you normally would but allow it to cool. Wash your hands well and begin pulling the meat from the turkey. Separate the turkey into groups: white meat with skin, white meat without skin, dark meat with skin, and dark meat without skin. That way, your guests can easily select their preference of turkey.
Besides the four basic groups you can separate the turkey into, you could also add large pieces of each group, and small pieces of each group. Some people will just want turkey, and that should be a fairly large piece. Others might prefer a turkey sandwich, and they might want smaller pieces.
The foods you serve with the turkey can include the same things you serve at any other Thanksgiving dinner. Warm some of the turkey, and offer some of it cold, and do so in each of the four basic groups of dark or white, skin or skinless.
Since you’re offering the turkey in various ways you might want to set out things you generally don’t put out for the Thanksgiving dinner, like sandwich bread, barbeque sauce, or even mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomato.
If you have a large crowd to feed this Thanksgiving they’ll all walk away happy if you serve a de-boned turkey, ready to be served without carving. No one gets hurt feelings because someone else was asked to carve the turkey plus guests don’t have to see those picked-through bones.