Nov 26th, 2008 at 11:12 am
The Case Against Turkey
I was going to say that Thanksgiving always leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth, but really it’s the bland taste of turkey. The bitterness is purely metaphorical — everyone feels compelled to eat a sub-par bird merely for the sake of tradition. I make the case for overthrowing the monstrous foul.
76 Responses to “The Case Against Turkey”
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November 26th, 2008 at 11:14 am
You need to try a Heritage Turkey next year.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:17 am
I did a wild turkey a few years ago, pretty tasty stuff.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:18 am
we’re making enchiladas and that sort of thing this year. No turkey
November 26th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Smash turkey tyranny!
November 26th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Brine the bird with various spices. Tabasco sauce. Fresh thyme. Some allspice. (Not much allspice.)
Turkey doesn’t need to be bland.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Deep-fried turkey is said to taste much better than the conventional version, but it’s anything but convenient to make.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Another reason:
http://tinyurl.com/69m6vy
November 26th, 2008 at 11:20 am
I pretty much agree, but I still think turkey is better than chicken. And for anyone who cares about their health, a mild-tasting non-fat delivery vehicle for protein is actually a good thing.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Boy you done lost your mind.
Take the advice above and brine your turkey before you cook it. Don’t put stuffing in it. You get a juicy tasty bird. Don’t damn the bird because the people you share the holiday with don’t know how to cook for shit.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:21 am
I made the case this year with my wife; she didn’t seem to agree, but I am on your side matt. Down with Turkey. Also, in my family, thankfully, we never eat turkey on Christmas; we go with goose, ham, or duck or something. Turkey is barely palatable once a year (for a damn week!).
November 26th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Honestly you’re just making your turkey wrong.
Somebody already mentioned this but you should brine your bird. It makes all the diff and it’s very easy to do. Watch Alton Brown. Learn Alton Brown. Live…LIVE Alton Brown.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:23 am
All you need is a brined turkey with good gravy.
Plus, you can’t have good stuffing without the bird.
And all those turkey sandwiches later…
But seriously, it’s all about the gravy. That’s what is clearly holding you back.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Deep-fried turkey is said to taste much better than the conventional version, but it’s anything but convenient to make.
Had deep fried turkey when I visited relatives in Valdosta, Ga., for Thanksgiving one year. By far the best turkey I’ve ever had, and apparently cooking time is faster.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Turkey can taste pretty bad, and I never have it British style, but the way my dad cooks it for Thanksgiving and Christmas makes it succulent and flavourful. Still, nothing wrong with going with goose for a change.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Are turkeys any worse than chicken? White meat from both birds need to be brined to be moist and flavorful. If you’re refering to the standard commercial bird, well, when you’re raised like an industrial product you tend to taste like one. Heritage birds cost a bloody fortune, I try to find a unbranded bird showing a real farm address on the label. It usually works.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:28 am
The general consensus is that brining makes a difference. Ming Tsai shows the way.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Everybody knows that the first Thanksgiving featured spaghetti carbonara.
http://www.rlrubens.com/Thanksgiving.html
November 26th, 2008 at 11:30 am
If you can get it, a wild turkey is about the best thing you’ll ever eat. Free-range heritage birds come close, but they’re not as tastey as a wild bird.
Stuff with sage dressing, of course. And use fresh sage just slightly wilted in hot butter.
Jeez, I’m hungry.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:32 am
So basically MY’s argument from that link is not “don’t eat turkey,” it’s breed turkeys for taste rather than size. Well there are plenty of people doing that.
Someone earlier mentioned Heritage Turkeys, which price out about $160 for an 18 pound bird. which should be fine since MY has confessed previously his affinity for pricey gourmet food.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:33 am
I make the case for overthrowing the monstrous foul.
Or we could adopt a “live and let live” policy. No harm, no fowl.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:35 am
A carpenter doesn’t blame his tools and cooks/consumers shouldn’t blame the raw product. Learn to cook. Buy a quality bird, not a commercial bred-for-size turkey. There’s no “bad food” and dismissing turkey out of hand reeks of flame-bait. I agree with #11 Eric; watch, learn and live Alton Brown.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Yglesias clearly knows not of what he speaks.
He can’t even spell “fowl.”
The claim that turkey is “bland” may be based on an upbringing with poorly roasted and dressed low-quality birds, but a well-prepared turkey is a feast for the senses.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:39 am
BRINE BRINE BRINE
Turkey is no good without this process.
Check out Charcuterie by Ruhlman & Polcyn -has great brining suggestions.
Also, the heritage turkey suggestion is a good one as well (I like the bourbon reds) but even a standard frozen turkey can be transformed by the brining process into something sublime.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:40 am
I personally prefer Wild Turkey, but only when I’m in the mood for bourbon. I usually prefer whiskey.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:40 am
I stuff my turkey, and it’s never been dry. But that’s because I put sage butter underneath the skin. I think turkey is delicious, but I’m also slightly sad that I’m not going to my brother-in-law’s big family Thanksgiving dinner, because they are having lobster, too. No one at the dinner I’m having to likes shellfish.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Try goose. Yum! What, you don’t like goose? What’s wrong with some goose? You not feelin the goose?
November 26th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Problem with brining is that it raises the saltiness of the bird into heart attack territory. The real answer is to carve the bird before roasting it– but that’s heresy.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:56 am
forget brine. makes the meat mushy and salty…and if you brine you get no real gravy….
run turkey with garlic, thyme and rosemary, and bacon.. hmm bacon…not too much salt..pepper and paprika…inside and out and let stand.
must have stuffing…lots of walnuts and celery and sage seasoning. .NOT too too much butter…
roast until almost cooked and then cover the breast and and open the legs. let the legs cook some more.
Take out of oven and let it stand..and not on the oven either get it to the counter where the cutting board awaits. now use the butcher method and remove the breasts and slice and cover with juices…stack the legs and wings and make gravy…
hmm gravy,,
November 26th, 2008 at 11:57 am
I’m sorry you Matthew that you have never been served a good bird. Maybe someday. It is something to look forward to!
November 26th, 2008 at 11:58 am
I agree that the Thanksgiving bird’s tastiness (or lack thereof) is probably a function of the type of bird and the skill level of its cook. My mother is so bad at roasting fowl (chickens, turkeys, any kind of bird) that we have been known to literally toss her turkey into the woods and order pizza on Thanksgiving day; on more than one occasion, we have eaten meatloaf (which she is VERY good at making). Now her husband is in charge of the turkey and he has fowl-roasting skillz, therefore our Thanksgiving meal is tasty and enjoyable.
But really, isn’t it all about the pumpkin pie?
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
November 26th, 2008 at 11:59 am
In addition to stuffing the bird, add some celery and 1/2 cup white vinegar to the bottom of the pan and cook covered (fully enclosed) for the first ~2.5 hours. After that, uncover and baste and/or use a cheese cloth until 1/2 hour to go. A meat thermometer is a must.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
As has been said, brine, brine, brine. It’s easy to do and makes for a delicious turkey.
Just put a defrosted turkey in a put filled with water and plenty of salt, rosemary, sage, and sliced lemons. Then when it’s ready to put in the oven, rinse it off (this is key to reducing saltiness!) and stuff the cavity with more fresh sage, rosemary, and cut lemons.
Oh, and cook the bird upside down until the last hour. It’s a bitch to turn over a twenty pound, four hundred degree bird, but it keeps all the juices flowing into the breast right up until the end, when turning it right side up gives you time to get the skin crispy.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Turkey is the only meat I eat. It’s far, far tastier than chicken, beef or pork. And generally healthier.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
I’m going to add my vote for brining. Until I learned to brine poultry properly, I was a mediocre roaster.
Basic brine: 1/2 salt (kosher) 1/2 sugar (I prefer less processed) per each quart H20. You can add spices to the brine or loosely pack them in the bird during cooking. You’ll need a big bucket for a big turkey and a way to seal it (with ice inside) if you can’t stick it into a fridge for overnight.
I can’t see chicken for a feast of 12-15 people. You need at least 3 8 pound birds and where you gonna cook them all at once? If you’re thanksgiving is smaller, sure, go with the chicken. But if you are like me (and invite everyone over…) you’ll need one big thing to cook. Turkeys come in that size.
The larger point, however, is that it requires time. My grandmother, who used to cook a massive 20+ person feast would start cooking and preparing 3 or more days ahead of time. This is a big commitment… but well worth it if done right. I don’t think many people nowadays like to spend more than 20 minutes thinking up a meal and throwing it together in 5…
November 26th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Nonsense. Vegetarians have the opportunity to eat the good stuff and forget the stupid turkey. We win; carnivores lose.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Err… 1/2 CUP sale, 1/2 CUP sugar…
You’re doing it wrong. You have to A) rinse the bird after removal from the brine and 2) don’t use any more salt on the bird after that. Also, remove any salt and pepper shakers from your dining table. Anybody who feels the need to insult you by salting your dish is either plenty rude or has an untrained palate.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Two thumbs down on the brine. See my prior post on roasting with white vinegar. Way better. Try it sometime.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Ha, “meat doesn’t taste good”…self delusion is a wonderful thing…;-)
November 26th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
It’s all about the sauce.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
William Connor, who wrote under the named “Cassandra” in the London Daily Mirror back in the ’50s, was not much of a fan of the bird at all. He wrote:
“The turkey has practically no taste except a dry fibrous flavour reminiscent of warmed-up plaster of Paris and horsehair. The texture is like wet sawdust and the whole vast feathered swindle has the piquancy of a boiled mattress.”
November 26th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Sorry Alan, but an overnight brine is essential to a juicy, flavorful bird. Nothing you are putting in the roasting pan is going to penetrate more than a 1/4 inch into the flesh of the bird before it has completely evaporated unless you score the skin (something the bird is covered with whose sole purpose in life and in death is to keep stuff outside of the bird from getting to the inside.) Additionally, if you are going to use an acidifying agent then why choose the only one in the kitchen that has no flavor at all? Why not use a cider vinegar? One side-effect of adding an acidifying agent to the roasting pan is that you are also going to turn any mirepoix you put into the bottom to catch juices (and carmelize to add flavor to the gravy) into mush over the long roasting time.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Brining is for the birds. It doesn’t work. The membranes restrict osmosis of the brine to just a few milimeters into the meat, if at all. Meat doesn’t have to be bursting with juices to be delicious.
Just learn to fookin cook. Fried turkey is the easy way to get the most flavor. I prefer smoked, because that is how I learned how to cook a turkey, from my neighbor whose smoked turkeys were incredible. I smoked two turkey breasts for work and people were all OMG! OMG! Where did you buy this? It must have cost a fortune! Do you have some kind of special smoker?
No, I smoked them on a simple charcoal grill using salt and pepper. It’s easy. All it takes is experience, care, patience, and the right equipment – a big heavy grill and a meat thermometer. Not $160 turkeys – mine came from the grocery store and cost $12. The turkey is so good it doesn’t need gravy, doesn’t need brining, doesn’t need injections. But even an oven baked store bought turkey can be good if you do it right.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
+1 on brining (Joy of Cooking has a pretty good set of instructions for the beginner)
I’m also a big fan of cooking the turkey upside-down for 2/3 of the cooking time.
Combine the brining and upside-down cooking and you’ll have a better turkey than you’ll find anywhere regardless of the price. Even old frozen turkeys taste good that way.
AND get a good piercing thermometer, it is the cook’s best friend.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
The point. Exactly. But you do get points for unintentional irony.
You say that like it’s a bad thing… instead of, like ya know, the reason it works. A layer, even if only a few millimeters thick, at the start of a 3+ hour cooking cycle traps existing moisture quite well. The saltier outer few millimeters is drawn into the bird during cooking. Of course, you can get a thicker initial layer by brining the bird for longer times at higher temps (don’t freeze the water…)
We agree, at least, on this…
November 26th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Wasn’t it Miles Standish who first wrote “Turkey may be a mediocre meat, but I’m having 30 people over and 50 cents a pound sounds a hell of a lot better than the $10 a pound decent beef would cost. And nobody can call me cheap as long as I declare it’s the ‘traditional’ fare!” ?
November 26th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
You spelled “fowl” wrong.
November 26th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
It starts with the bird, the breed, what it was fed (even the way the feed was raised and stored,) the way it was slaughtered and the way it’s stored. But I grew up with grandparents who raised their own food, and I raise as much of my own as I can. I cook as much of my own as I can. I buy as much from farmers I know as I can. I’m a very lucky woman to have this luxury in my life, the luxury of the labor of eating.
(I wasn’t offended with the Palin video, that’s what happens on farms and at slaughter houses; what’s offensive is that we don’t know where our food comes from and how it’s treated.)
Brining is a disaster if the turkey is injected with a brine already; read the label on your bird. If it’s not, it’s recommended, following the above directions. Bring the brine to a boil and let it cool completely before brining; IT MUST BE COOL, AND HELD IN A COOL PLACE — 40-DEGREES F OR COOLER. Another important trick for a good bird is searing; place the bird, breast-side up, in a hot oven, 425 F, for about 15 min, at the beginning of cooking. Turn down to 325 for the remainder of the cooking time. This helps seal the skin, and retain some of the moisture. Finally, don’t forget to basting, where you pour juice from the pan over the bird at intervals. Helps with both color and moisture. To tell when a bird is done, you really do need a thermometer. If you don’t have one, juices should run clear, not pink, and the drum stick should just begin to let go from the joint holding it. The bird needs to sit for about 20 min. before carving (this is when you make the gravy and cook the veggies,) and it will continue to cook during this time.
Most important of all is to remember that for the French, at the dawn of haute cuisine, turkey was (and remains) a wonder food, a treasure. I recall that Brillat-Savarin devoted five chapters in his book to the bird, though I might be wrong on that.
November 26th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Think of the devastated Maine Fishermen this year…
give thanks by enjoying the ultimate White Meat…Lobstah!
November 26th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Personally I think most of the posters are providing proof for Matt’s point. After all the talk about brining with sixteen different types of spices and wine, stuffing it with sage butter and bacon, smothering it with gravy and what not, I’ve got hiking boots that would taste pretty damn good if I did all that to them. His point was that the bird itself sucks, and reading all the things that people do to make for a yummy bird support it.
November 26th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
It turns out that Kalua Turkey is pretty good, too. If you know someone who’s going to be minding an imu overnight, ask if you can cockaroach some space near the pig. Rub the bird with salt, wrap in ti leaves, and bundle it with chicken wire mesh before placing it in the pit… ideally, directly on top of the similarly wrapped swine.
Even better is to help mind the imu, and bring along a 12 pack of Bud Lite.
November 26th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
The secret of the deep-fried bird is the injection of fat (butter, fer instance) and spice (1/3 butter, 1/3 lemon juice, 1/3 tabasco and whatever else that srikes your fancy that will squirt out the holes in the needle). Do that the night before so the bird kinda marinates from the inside out. In heat (the deep fryer hits it hot and heavy, but an oven does the job too), the butter melts into the flesh and the spices steam through the bird. Nothing bland about it.
November 26th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Matt,
This fact seems to be lost in the mists of time, but the great New York Times food critic Calvin Trillin once proposed replacing turkey as the official Thanksgiving food with fettuccini Carbonara.
Worth thinking about.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
If you want to keep it nice and moist, pull the skin away slightly from the breast and spoon/inject/squeeze a mixture of plain yogurt and olive oil between the skin and the meat.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
I believe Ben Franklin wrote that he was not pleased with the selection of the bald eagle as our national bird. He said the wild turkey had more courage.
Obviously, a well prepared turkey dinner is a true delight. Matt must be trying to be controversial here.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
As always, don’t listen to a bunch of jackasses on the InterTrons, and *especially* message board-posters. And this includes any jackasses named bonk. Instead, listen to Cook’s Illustrated, the supreme authority in all cooking techniques. And they say: brine.
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/serious-turkey-talk-with-christopher-kimball-of-cooks-illustrated.html
If Christopher Kimball brines his turkey, who the hell are you to do it any differently?
November 26th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
michael vick is a monster for abusing some dogs. slaughtering millions of birds raised in inhumane conditions though is A-OK!
November 26th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Matt, I agree with you – our family always has our extended family over, we make all this food, its the same every year, but WE don’t actually even like it that much. So, we finally decided to make food that WE like. We’ll be having a turkey TOO, for those who DO like turkey, but we finally decided that tradition was not a good enough reason to force OURSELVES to eat something we like less than the chicken and rice we WILL be eating. Works for everyone and for once, because we are bucking “tradition” without abandoning it, everyone will have a meal they enjoy.
November 26th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Why do internet discussions of food always bring out the repressed rage in people?
November 26th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Calvin Trillin long ago argued for spaghetti carbonara as a fine substitute for turkey for Thanksgiving in one of his great Tummy Trilogy books, I think “Alice, Let’s Eat.” All of which should be required reading in every school in America.
November 26th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
# hypocrisy Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
michael vick is a monster for abusing some dogs. slaughtering millions of birds raised in inhumane conditions though is A-OK!
Now, let’s not go there hypocrisy. Our family is going to sit down to a delicious dinner of barbecued cat. A stray, of course,
not the family pet.
November 27th, 2008 at 8:40 am
Matt’s right! Down with Turkey! With all our troubles in the Middle East it’s high time to bring back the Ottoman Empire.
November 27th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
For crying out loud, eat the dark meat.
December 12th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Washington, D.C. (AHN) – Nestle Prepared Foods Co. (NPFC) is recalling nearly 900,000 pounds of Lean Cuisine frozen chicken meals after a consumer complained of biting a bit of hard plastic while eating the packed dinner. The
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