So... Your Turkey's on Fire. Now What?
Whoops!
Has this ever happened to you?
No, that chamber is not a furnace; it is an oven. And no, that yellow ball is not the sun; it is my mother’s turkey.
Yes, JoAnn set the Thanksgiving turkey on fire in 2020, and it was completely inedible and could have burnt down our home. I caught it all on video, posted it to TikTok, and it now has over 1 million views.
So… what? Went? Wrong? Let’s break it down.
Pre-Explosion:
My mom is a “Go Big or Go Home” kind of person, and while my sisters and I were growing up, she would often try very complicated recipes or meals to hit The “Wow” Factor. This often resulted in a dinner preparation that took much longer than she would have anticipated, resulting in a pretty good dinner but some reasonable feelings of frustration. While we appreciate her efforts and gusto, my sisters and I wouldn’t want our single mom to be cooking up some crazy storm. We aren’t picky, but we are simple!
2020 Thanksgiving was in the heat of the pandemic, so instead of my extended 40+ family member Thanksgiving, my mom, sisters and I had to keep it to the four of us. My sisters and I knew it was my mom’s first time making a turkey, and we were a little nervous as to what approach she would be taking. The day before Thanksgiving of 2020, my oldest sister made me get in the car and drive with her to Lowe’s to get two fire extinguishers “just in case.” She taught me that all you have to do is pull a teeny pin out of the top by the handle, and push for the fire to be extinguished.
Throughout this blog, I will be including recent quotes from my sisters and mom that they wanted to help with the context of the story. So, Rachel said…
“Just always have a fire extinguisher available. I would also look up a statistic for fires because I’m pretty sure like 80% of house fires are due to a kitchen mishap,” - Rachel Santo, 2024
She was close! According to the oh-so-helpful AI feature on Google, it says that “the leading cause of house fires is cooking, which accounts for about 47.7% of all residential fires.” Yikes! Make that forty-seven point EIGHT percent!
So, I’m not sure exactly how big that bird was, but it was big enough for 4 women who JUST wanted to eat some turkey.
I would like to make it very clear… despite this first fact about the Santo girl turkey mishap… we are generally very smart individuals.
Anyways… my mom used a brownie pan to cook a whole turkey. Like a pan made for brownies? Right…. to cook a turkey. That was mistake #1 from Jo, which brings me to Jo’s first quote of the blog:
“I would like it to be in print that [The Brownie Pan] was NOT the original pan choice, but I was negligent in underestimating the capabilities of the bag,” - JoAnn Santo, 2024
To note, she did not mention what the original pan choice WOULD have been if it weren’t for the brownie pan, which makes me a bit skeptical. But anyways, you may be wondering “Hannah, what bag is your mom referencing?”
I’m glad you asked! Well, instead of cooking a turkey like a normal person would ESPECIALLY during their first go, my mom decided to use an “oven bag.” An oven bag (according to AI Google… AYOOO!) is a “heat-resistant bag used to cook food in the oven that traps moisture and flavor inside the bag to keep food moist and tender, thus enhancing its flavor.”
Moist? Tender? Enhanced flavor? The Bag = The “Wow” Factor. Do you see how Jo’s brain works? So, I would like to applaud my mother for giving it her all with the preparation of this turkey. You try your best, and… well… let’s just continue the story.
Now this portion of the blog piece is more up for your own interpretation. Take a look at this photo, and think about how it makes you feel:
No, really. Take a goooooooood look at what is going on in this pic. Gathered your thoughts? Great. Feel free to leave a comment.
I’m sure you’re having the same thoughts I was having when I walked into the kitchen. “Is that turkey… in… a bath towel?” I was actually concerned when I had this sight and prompted me to start the documentation of Thanksgiving dinner. When asked about the turkey, Jo said:
“You have to pat the turkey dry, whether you do that with a kitchen towel or a towel towel. I decided to use that towel towel!” - JoAnn Santo (With Enthusiasm), 2024
Look, I’ve never cooked a turkey. However, a bath towel, EVEN if it was cleaned with some heavy duty Tide, would not be my first choice for the “patting portion.” But, her decision had been made.
As you can also see in that action-packed photo, my mother is slipping on a glove as if she is about to perform a 6-hour craniotomy as lead surgeon. This was so she could take her herb butter mixture and slide it right in between the skin and the meat of the turkey. Observe:
As you could hear in the video, JoAnn “Martha Stewart” Santo was also laughing along with my sisters and I. We all knew the whole thing was ridiculous. Little did we know what was about to set ablaze.
The Explosion
Okay, so to recap: 1) Brownie Pan and 2) Oven Bag. Put those two together, and you get:
The good news is that the oven bag was working… that turkey is JUICED. If anything, it was working a little too well against the size of the pan and started collecting in a juice pocket. This is when the concern started to settle in for all 4 of us.
In that moment, I already knew what could happen: bag pops and goes right into the bottom of the oven. As you can hear in the video attached below, I say:
“Won’t a fire go WOOSH?” - Me, about 12 seconds before the fire went woosh, 2020
Feast your eyes on the full video filmed by me, and then we’ll reconvene:
GAH, WHY DOES 2020 HAVE TO BE THIS WAY!
I do think my sister manifested it all. First quote:
“Poke it Poke it Poke it Poke it Poke it Poke it Poke it,” - Becca, 2020
And may have heard RIGHT before the disaster took place, but she says what might be the most impactful quote from this experience:
“Don’t let the sack touch the rack,” Becca Santo, 1.3 seconds before the sack touched the rack, 2020
As someone who surrounds herself with a lot of comedy, I have luckily heard many funny things from many funny people. But that comment and its timing might be THE funniest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
So what EXACTLY happened? To put it simply, my mom was trying to flip the pan to see the other side with more juice, and pushed the pan right into the side of the hot oven wall. Bag immediately popped, all the juice falls, aaaaaaand woosh.
Now before you SAY ANYTHING like “Omg… screaming isn’t going to fix anything,” or “Bro… just CLOSE THE OVEN DOOR," … trust me when I say, we would have said the same thing if we saw this video happening to a different family. But when it is happening right in front of you, with the heat radiating on your face, you will go into that panic mode that we went into. Please excuse my family’s profanity. But when flames are screaming in your face, I promise you you’d also be freaking out.
I remember filming this, seeing the flames, and deep down knowing everything was going to be alright, and that my duty in that moment was to catch it all on camera because I was on track to receive a journalism degree AND it was unfortunate but hilarious. As soon as the fire started, I flew my phone up out of shock. Then, I got back into position and was sure to get the lens on the oven disaster. At around 0:24, you can hear me laugh. A bit immature, but SOMEBODY had to get it on camera, or else we wouldn’t be here! 😃
Rachel’s job was to get the fire extinguisher, which was… in the family room? But… the fire was in the KITCHEN! WHY DID WE BUY THE FIRE EXTINGUISHERS IF THEY WEREN’T IN THE SPOT THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE IN.
One of the greatest mysteries from this video is Rachel asks “Do we really need [the fire extinguisher]?” and someone screams bloody murder “YEEEEEEEEES RACHELLLLLLLLLL,” We have NO idea if it was me or Becca. Take your pick!
The fire went out by itself while Rachel was preparing the fire extinguisher, except she followed the pin-pulling steps, and nothing happened. That honestly happened for the best, because if Rachel DID do the fire extinguisher, that would have been a MESS!
“Thank God I bought this thing… I pulled the f*cking pin!” - Rachel Santo, 2020
Post-Explosion:
I didn’t know it was possible, but this turkey died for the second time that day. If it wasn’t dead before, it was DEFINITELY DEAD NOW.
Our mom was so spooked, and my sisters and I truly felt so bad, but we all could not. stop. laughing. She was so excited to serve a Food Network feast, but instead, she got this:
The turkey was absolutely ruined. The bag was charred and melted onto the bird. JoAnn was devastated. But… we quickly just started saying how. thankful. the kitchen. didn’t catch. on fire. And that no one got hurt! I do realize there was a literal FIRE indoors, but it really truly could have been worse. As you can imagine, our oven was quite ruined since it, understandably, cannot withstand 2,000° Fahrenheit temperatures.
My mom’s boyfriend bestowed a BLESSING onto us that day, and had a whole Thanksgiving dinner to feed an extra 4 people on top of his own family. So we packed our side dishes and ended up having, funnily enough, a very normal meal!
From the moment I stopped recording and the flames were gone, my brain gears were already turning. I knew that this had to go up on Tik Tok IMMEDIATELY. So, I got approval from JoAnn, overlayed Gene Autry’s “Here Comes Santa Claus” and waited. Immediately, my notifications blew up from a bunch of strangers finding amusement to the chaos that had erupted in our kitchen just a few hours prior. As of today, the video has over 1 million views, over 160k likes, and over 3,000 angry comments telling us to close the oven door. I invite you to read some of the comments because they are quite funny.
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Producers from AFV (you know, the show that makes fun of people?) and Awesomeness TV reached out to me asking if they could use it on their programs. I saw how this whole thing impacted my mom, and we decided maybe to NOT have that video on national television.
This day does not, and will not, leave our memories until the day we die:
“I remember the exact temperature on my face and the exact shade of orange that the entire room lit up,” - Becca Santo, 2024
Most have my friends have seen this video and shown it to their families. My very great friend Kate texted me this just a few days ago:
“It’s my favorite Thanksgiving memory, and I wasn’t even there,” - Kate Rigazio, 2024
In fact, the staff of NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers” was watching the video last year, quite possibly on full blast, which caused Seth to step out of his office and say:
“WHAT are you guys watching?” - Seth Meyers, 2023
This won’t be the first time I’ll use this phrase in a blog, but we always say “Santo girls never quit.” And, I am happy to say, that JoAnn Santo successfully cooked a turkey in an appropriate manner the following year. In the RIGHT sized pan. With NO bag. Just a PLAIN! OL’! TURKEY!
Ehh?? EHHH??? Jo made us say “Wow!” without necessarily having to rely on “The Wow Factor.” SANTO GIRLS NEVER GIVE UP.
So… what’s the moral of the story?
Always have a fire extinguisher
No brownie pan
No bag that probably is made of so many chemicals
HAVE FUN! WITHOUT FIRE! BUT IF THERE IS ONE, MAKE SURE TO ALWAYS HAVE A CAMERAMAN!
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Check out the last post:
I’m dying this is the best ever
This will forever be my favorite thanksgiving video ever