My Mom and I were pre-gaming Thanksgiving last night — we’re the main cooks for our respective celebrations, we both feed a house full of people, and neither one of us counts a huge turkey as our favorite meal to cook. Last year, we did Alton Brown’s recipe, which is a brined bird cooked in a really hot oven. It turned out quite good, but brining the monster birds we need to cook is a pain in the ass, involving garbage bags, ice and a cooler, since our refrigerators are full of other food.
As John mentioned earlier, Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias have the foodie view that turkey is inferior to other poultry. Ezra recommends this recipe from Mark Bittman, which I’ve also cooked (though not for Thanksgiving). It’s quite good, but you either have to find turkey parts (breast and thighs) or cut up a bird to make it. And, for Thanksgiving at least, you can’t feed a big crew from this recipe, unless you have a gigantic roaster.
As for the monster bird itself, I go back-and-forth on “free range”, organic poultry. A friend who grew up on a farm tells me that the chickens her grandmother raised and butchered taste nothing like today’s store-bought chicken, even the “free range” organic ones. She thinks that there are two reasons for this. First, the farm chickens of her childhood weren’t genetic monsters bred solely for their ability to add breast tissue. Second, free range on her farm was literally that: chickens walking around and foraging. Their diet was varied and they got a lot of exercise.
I’ll bet that explains why my experiments with “free range” turkey have been somewhat disappointing. My guess is that a “free range” organic turkey is still a genetic freak that’s fed an organic mono-diet and allowed to see the sun a couple of times in its too-short life. I don’t have hard evidence to back this up, but it’s the story I’ll be telling myself on Thursday morning when I take a gigantic Butterball, jam it full of stuffing, squeeze it into a Reynolds bag, and shove that fucker into the oven. I’m doing Thanksgiving old-school this year, and you’re going to need a shitload of gravy if you want to choke down any of the breast meat at my table.
debbie
I had an aunt who couldn’t cook, but because she had the largest house, Thanksgiving was always at her house. She relied on the cooking bag, and the turkey turned out just fine. It’s all in the gravy.
Southern Beale
Come to Kentucky or Tennessee, hon. We’ll fix you up with a wild turkey. You don’t get more free range than a wild turkey foraging in the woods.
MikeJ
I don’t believe Yglesias is taking the foodie view on turkey, I think he’s just reflexively contrarian. It’s a wonder that Slate hasn’t snapped him up,
Southern Beale
One year we went to visit my sister in San Francisco and had crab for Thanksgiving instead of turkey. Yum.
Maody
Having watched Food, Inc. like a fool last night (did I have to do this the Sunday before my favorite holiday?) we are eating a local free range heirloom chicken cooked at 450 with my rosemary, local garlic and freak lemon with homemade gravy. The fixins go like this: braised local brussel sprouts with pesticide pecans, mashed Monsanto Potatoes TM, whole ginger/orange cranberry sauce, sweet potato and Smithfield Tortured Pig bacon casserole.
Yum, yum.
My advice to all, do not watch Food, Inc. until after the holidays.
Jennifer
Ummm…if you just put the turkey into the pan breast-side down for most of the time it’s cooking, brining isn’t necessary. The breast-side down cooking technique keeps the breast from overcooking; also, the juices in the bird are running down and into the breast through most of the cooking time. You just take the bird out and flip it over for the last 45 minutes of cook time to brown the skin on the breast – not as hard to do as it sounds, even with a large bird. Voila – no dry, tough breast meat.
guster
Friend of a friend of mine raises organic chickens and turkeys. For him, at least, it’s not a mono-diet, and they’re pretty free-range.
But they _are_ freakishly inbred. They’re like fat lizards with feathers.
c u n d gulag
And don’t forget the “Stove Top Stuffing.” It’s the ‘Butterball’ of stuffing mixes. It’s mass-produced to appeal to everyone, so it appeals to no one. Until you eat it smothered, along with the turkey, drowning in enough gravy to be declared a bio-hazard.
YUMMMMMMM!!!
This Thanksgiving, please EAT responsibly. Or, have EMS on speed dial.
Teri
I get my turkeys from a local farmer who raises heritage birds. Chickens, turkeys, ducks etc. The eggs are awesome. She allows them to feed all over the place on the property and supplements with a organic feed. (no pesticides, preservatives etc). The turkey is rich, moist and flavorful. I do two turkeys for the 30+ people we have. I don’t brine the turkeys but I do marinate them with a mixture my great grandmother made up when she first cooked a turkey and it dried out on her. It is a mixture of butter, bourbon, seasoning (salt, peppers, garlic, onion, paprika, sage) and rendered pork fat. I can’t give you exact proportions because it changes every year depending on the size of the bird, their fat layer etc. But the birds are moist, delicious with a crispy tasty skin.
Mudge
Many years ago, late ’70s, a co-worker and I were discussing chicken at lunch. He bemoaned the lack of taste and talked about free range chicken he used to eat when he was growing up in Oregon. This is not a new discussion.
TheMightyTrowel
I made the bittman recipe 2 years ago (small oven, large crowd) and was really pleased with it. This year (new, larger oven, slightly smaller crowd) I’m roasting a whole (free range) bird. I live in the UK and they’re a lot more strict on what things like ‘free range’ mean – plus I know a good butcher and order my birds from him – so I’ve noticed a real flavour difference.
I don’t hold with the bake-in-a-bag thing. I’ll take my old fashioned V-shaped roasting rack and upside down bird, thank you very much.
As an aside, I love doing traditional pot luck thanksgivings abroad: i have 3 americans (incl myself) attending and 8 foreigners. We’ll be having Polish (american style) stuffing, german (american style) butternut squash, British (american style) apple crumble (with…ew… custard) and large quantities of guinness and port.
Ash Can
@Southern Beale: One of my favorite Thanksgiving meals ever was one year when I was a teenager, when my parents and I went to visit an aunt in Rhode Island. We all said to hell with the turkey, and went out to a local restaurant for lobsters that were bigger than our heads.
debbie
@Jennifer:
My brother cooks the turkey now, and he both brines and does the breast-side-down thing. It always ends up incredibly moist and fork-tender.
Elly
FWIW, we stopped eating traditional Thanksgiving meals a number of years ago. Since we normally don’t serve elaborate meals, the holiday is an excuse to go all out… but just about anything could be on the menu. The only prerequisite is that it has to be scrumptious.
This year, we’re dining Italian-style: antipasto, stuffed shells, meatballs, homemade bread, ricotta cheesecake, fresh fruit. And wine, of course.
Of course, it helps that it’s just our little nuclear family around the table, so we’re not offending an extended family’s sense of tradition.
J.W. Hamner
I’ve only cooked turkey a total of 3 times, so I’m by no means an expert… but it seems to me that turkey is pretty hard to cook right, due to the vaulted breast cavity… by the time the dark meat is done you’ll usually have overcooked breast meat… I say either go Bittman’s way and cook it in pieces or butterfly/spatchcock it (i.e. cut out the backbone). In either case you’ll have enough spare bits to roast for making gravy.
Note that cutting through turkey bones is significantly harder than cutting through chicken bones… make sure you have a sharp knife if that’s what you are going to do. I use a giant cleaver to get the backbone out and it’s still a PITA.
However, this year I’m doing just a turkey breast… Rick Bayless’s turkey mole as a matter of fact.
Carol
As a single who likes to have something of a Thanksgiving dinner, I find substitutes for turkey more convenient than even the smallest turkey. Suggestions: chicken thighs, pot roast or crown roast, even ham. They are easier to make than turkey because they take less time to defrost unlike the epic birds my mother used to have to stay up all night and cook. (There were ten of us).
I have no suggestions about dressing except that homemade really is better than Stovetop. I find Stovetop too salty and too flavorless for my taste. But our family’s homemade dressing is much better. We make ours out of croutons, pre-cooked turkey giblets, broth, butter, chopped onion and oysters combined with cooked cornbread. Bake at about 350 degrees until the top is crisp and the stuffing has a bit of firmness to it on the inside-like the consistency of bread pudding.
If you must have turkey, do what some of us have done some Thanksgivings: substitute a whole turkey for turkey legs and drumsticks-you can also buy the giblets separately for the dressing as well (or substitute chicken giblets as well). That’s for those who want dark meat. You can lay the cooked parts on top of the dressing as well for a few minutes if you want.
White meat can be turkey breasts in a bag. There is nothing but tradition that makes us cook a whole turkey instead of divvying it up and cooking the dark and light meats separately.
Bighank53
If you’ve got access to a Weber charcoal grill, smoke the turkey. Takes the same amount of time that it would in an oven, cleanup is quicker, and you would not believe how much flavor it adds. I will no longer cook turkey any other way.
Hal
I’m not a big fan of brining poultry. I always feel like you lose the flavor of the bird to the brine, and I want to taste moist turkey, not briney turkey.
I did a test run last week by smearing garlic and sage inside the cavity, and salt and peppered inside as well. Then I stuffed it with one lemon, one large orande (quartered), and two small onion, also quartered. I took half a stick of softened butter and smeared it all over the outside, and then salt and pepper on the outside, and that was it.
I baked it at 375 for about 4 hours, but drank too much while making it and had to go to sleep, so my sister stuck the bird in the oven overnight at 200. I did baste it once an hour while at 375 (uncovered.)
She took it to work the next day and said the meat fell of the bone. All and all, very easy to make. Cooking drunk is fun!
Oh, and I took the neck out and left it in the bottom of the pan, planning to make gravy, but that didn’t work out.
Suck It Up!
Having Thanksgiving with my friend and her husbands family (can’t afford to fly this year), so I have no idea what’s on the menu nor how it will taste.
Past T-days with my own family have consisted of oxtail, roast beef, chicken and fried fish. No turkey. We’re from the islands so we tend to stick to Caribbean foods.
Hanspeter
If you’re worried about dry breast meat and must have turkey, go with what others said and flip the bird upside down. Or better yet, skip the breast altogether and feast on thighs (drumsticks can get dry too) and neck. The neck is utterly delicious, but unfortunately only provides about 1/3 of meat portion, if that.
TheMightyTrowel
@Hal: In flavouring terms: this year’s experiment is lemongrass garlic and chili paste as a rub on/under the skin and within the cavity. I’ve done it with chicken and guinea fowl before and it’s stupendous. Also, it makes you drink a lot.
beltane
The chickens that are used for meat today, even the organic, free-range chickens, are hideously inbred birds known as Cornish crosses that are incapable of mating or even just sitting on a perch, and which can hardly walk on account of their heavy breasts. Even if they are not slaughtered, they will die from heart failure before they are six months old. There really isn’t much free-ranging these birds are capable of, and the ones marketed as free-range are really just confined to a chicken tractor for their entire lives.
Can’t say I’m a big fan of turkey, either. We have raised some ducks to slaughter for our Christmas dinner, I’ll have to see how that goes.
Bruuuuce
Since our oven is currently non est, we’re going the alternative route this year. We have a fresh ham, which is going into the slow cooker with apples, potatoes, and a bunch of other stuff. We do have a toaster oven for stuffing, and a world-class bakery is providing dessert (pear tart, in this case).
Then I get to go into work at midnight. What a country :-)
thruppence
I usually put stuffing under the skin over the breast meat – it keeps it from overcooking and infuses the meat with whatever herbiness your stuffing has.
Re: upside down turkey – how the heck do you safely turn over a huge slippery oven hot bird? Seems like it would end up on the floor more often than not…
Keith
You’re looking for what’s referred to on as “heirloom poultry”. I was also disappointed when I tried a locally-raised, slaugtered-on-day-ago free-range chicken, but a Cornish cross is a Cornish cross. I keep hearing the “this is what chicken usd to taste like” on the Travel Channel/FoodTV, but I still have yet to try a “real”-tasting turkey or chicken (although I have been meaning to buy a blue-foot chicken online to do a comparison)
El Cid
It’s not exotic, but each year the family unit oven-roasts a regular store-bought frozen turkey, usually around 16 or more lbs.
We put a little garlic and butter under the skin, a good bread and vegetable stuffing recipe, and cook it at standard temperatures for whatever time it takes til the little implanted pop-up does its thing. It’s covered in foil with outlets at either end. Periodically we baste it.
And then, when it’s done, we remove it to a rack to drip, cover it again in foil, cover that with a few towels, and let it sit maybe 15 minutes.
And every single year it’s amazingly good, dark meat and white meat. Perfectly juicy, impressively flavored, and everyone raves about it. Each year.
A well-prepared ordinary turkey is absolutely delicious. We don’t brine, smoke, or anything else. Plenty of celery and onion in the stuffing to steam the interior.
So I don’t really understand why people seem so dissatisfied and dismissive of the ordinary oven-roasted turkey. And most of us are pretty far ranging in food experience.
LGRooney
I was informed by my 7-year-old son last night that I would be doing a turkey this year. My wife was distressed because she had planned it completely differently but then smiled that little smile that shows me she understands: I was the one born American so I will be the one doing all the work, i.e., she can claim she has no clue how to do a turkey. I can claim the same but it rings hollow to everyone’s ears… especially those of my son who seems to have tired of my attitude to life, summed up most accurately by my mother, “The only word you consider dirty is ‘tradition.'” I think he thinks he is missing out on something.
Okay, so help, how do I cook a turkey? Or should I destroy it just to prove my point?
jeffreyw
This year: A turducken with shrimp jambalaya stuffing.
General Stuck
Since the Pilgrims were nothing more than a bunch of long hair soshulists. I plan to have me some Cheeseburger with biggie size freedom fries. You Apparatchik lackeys can suck a free ranging egg, for all I care.
Josie
When I downsized to a smaller house with a single oven instead of a double, I bought an electric roaster for my larger meals. The turkey cooked in it tastes better and more moist than any I ever cooked in my big fancy oven. I wish I had discovered it years ago.
PanAmerican
Amateur day. I’m going out and letting the professionals do their job.
debbie
@ Hal:
We’ve never had that problem, but I’ve heard this from other people. I think the problem is either using too much/wrong kind of salt, letting it sit in the brine for too long, or not rinsing well enough after the brining.
cleek
it’s Alton Brown’s brine for us. just the two of us, so we get a 12-14 pounder. we do the brining in a new 5 gallon utility bucket from Home Depot. works like a charm, every time.
@MikeJ:
i gave up on MY last week. i can only take so much Ain’t-I-Clever economics.
LarsThorwald
Fried Turkey.
About ten years ago my Dad fried a turkey. You inject a 20 lb. bird with a mix of equal parts melted butter and a water/garlic mixture and you then lower the entire thing into bubbling hot peanut oil for 45 minutes.
I was extraordinarily skeptical. Number one, because with a frying time like that you are either going to pull out a blackened thing, or, even if it doesn’t burn, the insides are going to be dry as hell and the skin is going to be greasy as shit.
Well, it doesn’t burn, and the immediate flash frying of the exterior of the Turkey has a way of retaining all the moisture.
It was, and remains, the best way to cook a turkey. The meat is so moist and juicy you can barely stand it.
Every year since we’ve fried our turkeys.
I’ll never
put on another lifejacket, Mr. Hooperroast a turkey again.beltane
@Keith: I’ve eaten “real chicken” before, a friends surplus male Buff Orpingtons, and it really is an acquired taste. Tough and stringy. Real chicken is superior for things like soup and other dishes requiring slow, gentle cooking, but not quite adaptable to the way most people prepare food today.
R. Johnston
Silly mistermix. You don’t brine a turkey yourself; you just buy kosher.
burnspbesq
Since we’re getting on a plane first thing Friday morning, we have decided to wimp out and go to a restaurant with friends. In any event, with only three of us in the house, even the smallest turkey leaves us with a lot of excess meat, which typically ends up as cat and dog food somewhere around the following Tuesday.
Linda Featheringill
@TheMightyTrowel:
Oh, that sounds like fun. I’ll be right over!
debbie
@thruppence:
With clean oven mitts you then toss into the wash. They also make special silicon mitts that you can just rinse off afterwards.
BattleCobra90000
mistermix – I read a few years ago in Cook’s Illustrated that the Butterball had won their “taste test.” The secret is that it comes pre-brined. So I know you’re trying to be all real-Merkin by going with the Butterball, but you’re actually being ivory tower elite. Sorry.
Has anybody noticed that egg shells have gotten extremely brittle in the past few years? Is this a feature, or a sign of the end times?
mistermix
@Carol: Stovetop is way too salty, I agree. The conventional wisdom on bread stuffing is that it dries out the bird, but I like stuffing that’s been cooked in the bird, so I’ll be doing that this year. I use store-bought dry, seasoned croutons, some stock, some water, cooked giblets, and celery and onions softened in butter.
@Josie: A roaster is a good idea, they’re cheap and useful. My mother-in-law feeds even more people than my mom and she deploys multiple roasters, including one just for stuffing, believe it or not. Her stuffing is an inferior “wet” stuffing, using eggs, while I prefer the objectively superior “dry” stuffing.
elmo
I am a huge fan of Butterball turkeys done the traditional way, but I’m also careful not to overcook the breast. Yes, this means that the dark meat next to the bone is still a little medium-rare, but I like it that way.
We’ve also eaten true free-range, heirloom-breed turkeys that we raised ourselves, from the egg. Totally different animal. There is practically no white meat. The dark meat tastes a little bit like lamb. And it made the best damn turkey soup ever.
mistermix
@BattleCobra90000: A real American Thanksgiving is judged by the variety of Jell-O salads, not by the bird.
Bruuuuce
@LGRooney: When I do a turkey, I rub it liberally with garlic butter, then place it in a roasting pan with a V rack in an oven at 325 degrees or so, covered with foil. Use a thermometer in the thickest part of the thigh (but NOT touching the bone) to determine doneness; it needs to get to 165 F, which should also keep the breast fairly moist.
You can stuff the bird or not, as you please (I prefer to stuff, but then bake the stuffing for a crust afterward).
There are people who swear by Alton Brown’s recipe; it sounds good, but I’ve never made the effort. (He also has a method for deep frying a turkey using a ladder as a “turkey derrick”; look it up and be amused.)
Whatever happens, good luck and enjoy!
MikeJ
@cleek: This is one of the few places on the net where you can say of a writer, “it’s a wonder Slate hasn’t snapped him up” and people will know you were insulting him. That’s why this blog is militantly superior.
Maody
@Elly: This is my first year back to regular Thanksgiving fare. Usually I pick a country and make a meal based on that cuisine and have some friends over. One year it was Moroccan couscous royale, next year France, next year Iran – which was the best ever including a dish called The Iman Fainted, and then back to France last year. (used to be in the restaurant biz)
I just don’t have the git up & go this year, nor the cash so my employer/pal is paying for most and hosting. We’ll play Spite & Malice when we aren’t involved with food.
I live in one of the only counties in the U.S. that has more family farms in 2010 than in 1990, mostly organic and the bird is heirloom/heritage free range & not corn fed. They still don’t taste like they used to.
For phoebesmother if you are reading this – remember when Ma used to make our favorite 4 starch meal? Stewing hen with fat noodles in gravy served on top of mashed potatoes with peas on the side? The best.
zzyzx
My wife has become very interested in where her food comes from. We get our eggs from a free range farm about 70 miles north of Seattle, and by free range, I almost ran over one of the chickens when it was wandering out on the road the first time we went there. Sometimes free range does mean that.
(Insert “To get to the other side” joke here)
vtr
I think brined birds taste like Butterballs. Also. I tried smearing butter under the breasts skin, but the butterfat burned and added a mildly unpleasant flavor. We use Alton’s foil triangle and it works well. We watched Palin last night end to end at the insistence of our home from college son. Have you ever seen anyone less capable of using a firearm?
MikeJ
@mistermix: Real dressing is made with cornbread that you’ve made the night before, mirepoix, lots of sage, and some other little odds and ends. It is not cooked inside the bird.
Also too, emacs is the one true editor and Macs suck.
LGRooney
@Bruuuuce: Okay, thanks. I imagine there will be space to write on the flip side about our respective results. Garlic butter it will be, probably with a mix of sage and rosemary once I find the right proportions (they change every time depending on mood).
Peter
I’m making duck confit, because I think turkey is vastly overrated. Last year I did goose: confit the legs, sear the breasts to medium rare, make pho with the carcass. Traditional accompaniments, but much more interesting.
Jim C
We’ve had “free-range” birds for at least 15 years now, when we’re hosting at least, and they’ve always been fine. Our only problem came from having a dying oven, which threw off cook times.
Personally, I’ve never had a problem with those Butterballs. I think they were genius to genetically engineer those turkeys to be born with pop-up timers in their breasts.
The bird’s not my bailiwick, anyway. I’m the root vegetable (bourbon sweet potatoes) and breakfast bread (family variation on Danish Kringle) person.
zzyzx
We’re vegetarian so we don’t have to worry about the turkey, but our meal will be plenty unhealthy, seeing how we purchased 4 pounds of butter.
Josie
@mistermix: Okay, now you’re just looking for an argument with your “objectively superior dry stuffing.” You must be a Yankee or something. Stuffing should have more cornbread than any other bread, along with celery cooked in chicken stock, onions cooked in butter, seasonings and eggs. Dry stuffing is hard to choke down.
MikeJ
@Josie: See my 49. My guess is I could secretly swap the stuffing mix form our tables and nobody would know the difference.
You are obviously a person of discerning taste.
J.W. Hamner
@Peter:
I did cassoulet last year, making the duck confit for it myself. I would defintely love for that to be our tradition instead… but turkey can be pretty good I think.
TheMightyTrowel
@Linda Featheringill: It’s always an experience and a surprise. What’s particularly fun is forcing my staid, stiff-upper-lip, anti-sincerity British friends to participate in one of my family traditions by each admitting publicly one thing they’re thankful for. By the way they squirm, protest and blush it’s like I asked them each to strip and role naked in the leftovers while singing the worst Beatles song ever acappella.
PurpleGirl
OTOH you can go to a restaurant for the Turkey dinner. I’ve done that several times, either by myself or with a friend. This year, a friend is getting half a cooked turkey and most of the side dishes and bringing them to my house for dinner time. We did something similar last year with a third friend at her house. The turkey was good, there were leftovers and we didn’t have to go crazy cooking and timing everything. Instead, we spent the time talking and enjoying ourselves. As we see it, the idea is having good food and an enjoyable experience. This also allows being able to avoid the relatives who drive you crazy (for whatever reason).
lacp
I roasted a heritage turkey for GF and family a couple years ago; tasted great, but you need a watchful eye – because it has a lot less fat than regular turkey, it roasts really, really quickly.
Anyway, screw turkey – goose is the way to go. Better flavor and a hell of a lot easier to cook.
mistermix
@MikeJ: I’m with you on emacs, but no carrots. Sage is fine.
@Josie: This is perhaps the only point of disagreement between me and my MIL, but she, like you, is wrong. You’ve described (and she cooks) some form of salty bread pudding, not stuffing.
Dennis SGMM
For the past three years we’ve been buying our turkey at Trader Joe’s. The birds are hormone-free, which is the most important part for us. They’re also around twelve pounds, just right when you’re only feeding a family of three.
I’m a lazy cook so I just rub the turkey with mild olive oil and sprinkle on just a bit of sea salt and freshly ground pepper. My wife and son never learned to appreciate baked-in-the-bird stuffing so now it’s Stove Top jazzed up a bit with chopped apple, celery and walnuts.
Over the years I’ve found that having a proper roasting pan, with rack, and using a meat thermometer to determine doneness are crucial.
Bruuuuce
@LGRooney: Uh-oh. Now I feel responsible for your family’s meal :-)
Have a tasty Turkey Day!
Scuffletuffle
@Maody: “The Imam Fainted” … Interest, newsletter, website?
Foxhunter
@beltane:
Same holds true for non-farm raised turkey. Wild turkey is extremely difficult to cook and it is an aquired taste, also.
However, if you harvest a wild turkey from an area where it feeds mostly on acorns, it tastes much better than one that primarily grazes on grasses and eats bugs.
Either way, it’s meat will be tough and stringy if not carefully watched under heat. Much better fried.
Maody
@Scuffletuffle: made The Iman Fainted for the haters. It would make a nice blog.
PurpleGirl
@jeffreyw: Turducken calls for three stuffings. What are the other two? Or are using that for all three layers?
A year or two before my Peekskill friends moved to FL, he got the bug to make a turducken for his birthday dinner (Dec. 24). His wife pulled together a surprise party for him in about 2 weeks; the guests brought the side dishes and desserts. There were maybe 20 or so people there. We ate the whole thing, there were no leftovers of bird meat. It was good and cutting it into slices showed all the layers of meat and stuffings. He may never make another one because of the work involved in deboning all three birds.
cleek
@Foxhunter:
i prefer my wild turkey on the rocks. or, flaming, dropped into a beer.
Foxhunter
@cleek: That’s all kinds of awesomeness. LOL.
BTW – your Top 100 lists are great. Always great to peek in and find something that I’ve neglected to add to my collection. Appreciate the efforts!
jeffreyw
Description: As featured on the Food Network and voted Best Overall and Best Value by Wall St. Journal, our Turducken is a semi-boneless turkey stuffed with a deboned chicken and deboned duck breast and then we add delicious Seafood Jambalaya (crawfish, shrimp & rice) stuffing between each bird.
dmsilev
My mom has responsibility for the turkey. Standard roasting, using Pepperidge Farm stuffing laced with chestnuts (which was how *her* mother made turkey). As is traditional in our family, my mom and I share the responsibility for dessert. She makes an apple pie, and I make a chocolate cake. I regard it a point of pride never to make the same recipe twice. This year, it’ll be this one. I usually pick three recipes, make a test cake of each, and bring them into work to be evaluated. I’m very popular with my coworkers in late October/early November….
dms
lou
The Miami Herald food staff 20 years ago came up with a recipe for turkey that imitated a Cuban-roasted pig.
You combine butter, fresh oregano and garlic and slather the turkey with it. Cover the turkey with thick-cut slabs of onion and bacon. Squeeze some sour oranges over the mess and put garlic cloves and the sour orange rinds in the bird cavity. You will end up with hardened arteries but it is well worth it every five years or so.
geg6
It’s the usual potluck at my sister’s house. I, for some reason, am always taxed with the ham (serving an alternative meat has always been my family’s tradition), youngest sister with the sides (she makes an awesome yam/peaches casserole), oldest sister with breads and desserts (traditional pumpkin pie, apple caramel pie, and a totally retro jello cake), and hostess sister with the turkey (which she always overcooks), stuffing (which is a masterpiece), a delicious homemade cranberry/orange sauce, and mashed potatoes (the dirty kind–yum).
Thanksgiving has always been the day that my family celebrated my birthday (occurs on, before, or after the holiday) and, thus, is my personal favorite holiday. I like all the hokey traditionalness of it. My family’s usual culinary daring takes a back seat to Norman Rockwell and we have the exact meal my mother made her entire life. I adore it.
chopper
i get a small enough bird to jam into the slow cooker, or cut it into parts first (which is better) and put it on a rack with some leek and garlic on the bottom.
put in the breast after the legs have been in there a bit, let it all go for a good number of hours til it’s all done.
let it cool off a bit, then oil/season the skin again and broil it for a bit before you’re going to serve it. super tender, super moist, very little work, no worries about it drying out before all the guests arrive.
Foxhunter
@jeffreyw: And everytime I hear Turduken, all I can think of is John Madden.
Warning: Frank Caliendo link, not John Madden.
Judas Escargot
@cleek:
i gave up on MY last week. i can only take so much Ain’t-I-Clever economics.
I stopped reading MY when I noticed my comment posts kept getting deleted (ie not moderated– they’d show up for a minute or two, then get pulled) whenever they disagreed with whatever his oh-so-clever thesis was that day.
(Don’t think it’s him, though– I just think there’s some overzealous staffers over at thinkprogress).
As far as turkeys go, we still have wild ones around town: Last friday, a group of four of them stopped traffic to a standstill by deciding that the centerline of Rte 1A would be a great place to stop and strut for awhile.
Wonder if that counts as free-range?
J.W. Hamner
Cornbread based stuffing is my personal fave. One of the benefits of cutting your turkey up Bittman style or butterflying it that you can use a rack or the top of a broiler pan and put the stuffing underneath the turkey parts to soak up the drippings.
PurpleGirl
@jeffreyw: Okay, I can understand buying one and not cooking it yourself. I didn’t watch my friend do the deboning but his description of the process was enough for me to question his sanity that year. (He did fully cook three different stuffings on the stove before using them in birds.)
I hope you and the Mrs. and whatever company you may be having over for the holiday enjoy it.
jeffreyw
@PurpleGirl: Well, we will be cooking the thing. It arrived raw, frozen solid. I appears that it has been injected and/or slathered with seasonings. I took it from the freezer last night for the three day thawing. I am off to town in a minute to buy one of those standalone roaster gizmos, and to round up the ingredients for the sides.
We will have no company for the feast, but will make enough for a fair crowd. I like leftovers.
Josie
@MikeJ: Agreed@mistermix: I beg your pardon. My stuffing is not salty. I use very little salt but lots of sage and pepper. Maybe “hot” bread pudding but not salty.
Sasha
Most turkeys, including so called “pastured” or “free range” are BBW’s (Big Breasted Whites) and they are the Cornish Rock Cross of turkeys. Like the Cornish Rocks, they cannot breed normally and are prone to heart attacks and leg problems as they age. Even without butchering, few will live beyond a year. Pastured birds, unless they are day ranged, are usually kept in pens that, while moved daily, do not allow a lot of room for exercising. “Pastured” has no legally defined meaning and unless you order from people you know or trust may not be much different from Butterballs, sad to say. I think the bird still has a better quality of life and that’s important but it’s essentially the same item.
By the way, the Cornucopia Institute gives Trader Joe’s Organic Milk the lowest possible rating. I don’t know that there is any connection to their other food but I thought I’d put that out there.
http://www.cornucopia.org/dairysurvey/index.htmlKilgore Trout
We usually just do a turkey breast, and our preferred method is in a crock pot (we have a large, oval shaped one that works great). Always moist, and super-easy to do. We actually make turkey dinners year-round, probably one a month or so.
andy
As far as I’m concerned, if you want a big bird capon is the only way to go- otherwise take that turkey and pull the backbone and ribs out and braise it flat.
uila
mistermix,
Do yourself a favor – skip the oven bag. Instead, line the bottom of your pan with carrots and celery. Bird goes on top of the vegetables, which then collect the juices to make your gravy stock.
Before going in the oven, oil the bird from top to bottom. Make an inverted V-shaped tent out of aluminum foil to place over the bird and the stuffing hole. Turn up the oven as high as it goes for the first half hour to sear the outside and lock in the moisture, then dial it back to your normal cooking temp from there on out. When you get to the last half hour, remove the foil.
I guarantee a moist turkey. No brining and no basting, not to mention no bisphenols or whatever the hell else a plastic bag introduces into the food.
Martin
Rotisserie turkey this year. The chickens come out awesome, we’ll see what a brined/smoked/slowly turned turkey comes out as. Biggest concern is dealing with the stuffing when there’s a ginormous steel rod going up the turkey’s ass.
Forecast is sunny and 66, so thankfully my outdoor cooking commitment doesn’t look to be rained out. Looking forward to having use of the oven this year – need to fill the house with yummy smells, so I think I’ll make pies day of, rather than day before.
BTW, the key to a really good oven turkey is to cook it upside-down most of the time (roasting rack so it’s not sitting in liquid). All the juices settle in the breast and it comes out fantastic. It’s a PITA to flip a turkey the size of a toddler when it’s 325 degrees, but that’s the only downside. Give it a blast at 400 to crisp up the skin after you flip it. And you never need to worry about tenting it/burning.
The Bobs
I’m surprised no one has mentioned it yet, but the thing these days is cutting up your turkey before cooking. We started doing it about 5 years ago and will never go back.
Cut off the leg/thigh at the body. Remove the wings. Then cut off the back. A cleaver really helps for this part. The back, neck, wings and giblets go into the stock pot. Place the breast on top of a pile of stuffing without using a rack. Place the legs alongside the breast and roast at 375F. Remove pieces when they are done. The leg/thigh are always done first. You will be amazed at how good the leg is when it hasn’t been obliterated. The breast is done at 165F, not a degree more.
I like Alton Brown, but the brining thing makes it too salty. It also renders the pan drippings so salty that they are virtually inedible. This is also why I like to use natural turkey, as the injected chemicals tend to accumulate in the drippings.
If you are too lazy to cut it up, upside down works pretty well, as other have said. Still results in overdone legs though.
The Bobs
Also too, convection ovens rock.
JCT
I’m the lucky Thanksgiving victim around here and I’m never satisfied with the bird. Not to mention the fact that my husband’s family is so freaking picky (“no mushrooms please and no eggs, oh and so and so would prefer if you tone down the garlic” — WTF, I’m Hungarian, that’s blasphemy). Gravy without any mushrooms? Ahhhh.
So this year my husband took pity on me and offered to make his stellar brisket. To take advantage of my daughter’s new found skills with Moroccan food (spent the summer there studying and her homestay mom taught her some fantastic stuff) — the other course will be Pumpkin couscous in the Fez tradition. It is one of the best things I have ever eaten.
Of course, the grumbling started — “oh, that sounds “interesting”, be sure to make plenty of brisket as so and so doesn’t like pumpkin and her husband hates lamb….”
This “holiday” gives me agita.
Peter
@J.W. Hamner: It can be, if it’s an heirloom breed with flavor. You might like this piece I wrote on techniques for making turkey more interesting.
Mr. Upright
The wife gave me a rotisserie attachment for my 22.5″ Weber charcoal grill in 2004, with the instructions that I was to make the turkey that year. I have done it on many occasions since and have come to the conclusion that charcoal/rotisserie grilled turkey is just damn good and pretty much idiot proof.
Martin
@The Bobs: Just use less salt. The whole point of brining is to use the increased saline level to get the cells in the turkey to absorb more water (and to add some flavor). If you turn down the salt, it’ll still work just as well.
Bella Q
@Maody: I am such a geek I have a couple of cookbooks with recipes for “the Imam fainted.” I also have a lovely fruit terrine recipe that is in gelatin made with cranberry (or blended w/other fruit) cranberry 100% juice, which is of course jello salad putting on airs. But it’s beautiful, tasty, and a way to be a real ‘merikun elite on a holiday.
Gina
@Bighank53: Outdoors on the bbq is our plan again this year too. I get whatever bird is at the grocery store that doesn’t have any added anything, butterfly it and add an insulation layer of fatback under the turkey skin. I like hardwood charcoal, and I usually throw a piece of oak on top for extra smokey goodness at some point during the cooking.
It’s supposed to be somewhat rainy during the PM here, so hopefully I can get things done without braving a downpour.
Xecky Gilchrist
For those who are (like me) meatless but miss the turkey, I recommend Bryanna Clark Grogan’s vegan faux-turkey. It’s a great thanksgiving thing because it’s quite realistic and almost as fiddly to prepare as a real turkey, which is half the point of cooking turkey anyway as this thread joyfully shows.
(ETA: consists almost entirely of wheat gluten and soy, apologies to the folks who can’t eat those.)
Bella Q
@Scuffletuffle: Imam Bayildi, courtesy of WaPo: recipe and references.
Gina
I usually cook stuffing in a crock pot, I can make the mass quantity needed to meet the demands of my son’s superhuman stuffing appetite and still smoke the bird outside. This year, I don’t have a working range oven, so the meal’s all going to be done on alternate appliances anyway.
Tokyokie
A few years back, I cut up a turkey into pieces like you might a whole chicken, then grilled the sucker Jamaican-jerk style. I thought it turned out wonderful, although my haughty sister-in-law turned her nose up at it because it didn’t look like something from a Norman Rockwell painting.
feebog
I’m smoking a 17 lb bird in my electric smoker. This year we are going to brine it in a cranberry brine for about 16 hours. I stuff the cavity with oranges, apples and onions to keep the bird moist while smoking. I have found that I don’t have to smoke it very long, maybe six hours, and can then finish it in the oven.
Joel
Doing larded turkey this year. Saw it on Cook’s Country and that they didn’t have to brine it. Chris Kimball said it was the best turkey he’s ever had (which he says fairly often). Nice bowtie.
WereBear
The first year I cooked Thanksgiving dinner, my Brooklyn born, Romanian Sicilian, first husband insisted on a giant kosher turkey. Taking off the wrapper revealed a LOT of startlingly long hair which had to be burned off with a welding torch. Despite an extensive cavity search, I left something in the bird, a record I maintain to this day.
Soooooo, most of the time, I get the stuff from a local gourmet deli the night before. It’s better than I could do, and good for the economy.
Nellcote
So sourdough croutons for stuffing are a SF bay area thing?
Maody
@scuffletuffle:
@BellaQ: maybe you might like it, too.
sorry, didn’t have enough coffee to figure out you wanted a recipe… d’oh. slightly more with it, I offer you my The Iman Fainted, or Bayildi
Much more complicated than the WaPo link and comes from of a movie I saw, the name of which escapes me, but involves a woman who cooks for truckers against Iranian law.
Cube eggplant, salt and let drain for an hour, rinse, saute in olive oil until done. Remove to side. Saute onions, red peppers and garlic until just tender, add to eggplant. Mix with lemon zest, goat cheese, capers, toasted walnuts, cubed, seeded & peeled tomatoes, orange juice (just a touch) parsley, basil, cinnamon, cardamon, allspice, more raw chopped garlic, salt and red pepper. It was marvelous. This recipe is by taste… remember, I was a paid cook in a former life.
In this version, it is eaten at room temp and with garlic/olive oil toasted pita.
jl
Chicken, turkey, ducks. All the same. You need to feed them freshly prepared chicken slop, and some kind of high protein forage crop, like alfalfa. Lots of old fruit.
Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods
I put the turkey into a bag, the bag into an oven, and then I drop the whole oven into a Dumpster filled with boiling oil. I call it the Tur-Bag-Ster.
Top that!
Original Lee
We have always steamed our turkeys. It works great as long as you don’t overdo (in which case you have turkey soup). All the meat is very tender, as you might expect, and it’s very simple and quick.
1. Prepare turkey as usual.
2. Put turkey in roaster (stuffed or not – your choice).
3. Pour about 4-6 cups of water in the bottom of the roaster.
4. Cover the turkey entire top of the roaster with a tent heavy-duty aluminum foil, crimping where there are sheet overlaps and all around the edge of the pan, so that the turkey is in a sealed environment.
5. Put in 475 degree F oven.
6. The turkey should cook at 5-7 minutes per pound. (Really depends on your oven, but this is about right. We have done a 20-lb turkey in about 2 hours this way.)
7. For the last 20 minutes, remove foil for browning.
jl
Oops, little mistake in my last comment.
Chicken, turkey, ducks. All the same. You need to feed them freshly prepared kitchen slop, and some kind of high protein forage crop, like alfalfa. Lots of old fruit.
Then they taste good and are juicy, Don’t have to fuss around with exactly how to cook them.
Elie
Roast that sucker at 450 for about two hours for 16 lbs and you have a juicy, flavorful turkey
Turkey is too linked in my mind with tradition of family, home and hearth to ever not have — even if I were alone and making a breast or drumstick by myself..
And then, turkey sandwiches from leftovers squishy with mayo and whatever. Have a friend who also piles dressing on her sandwich with gravy also
Also, make a great turkey pot pie with butter pate frisee crust, carrots and peas with a heavy cream sauce ( yum yum)
If the weather is warm some years I grill the turkey on my Weber — also wonderful and imparts a nice little smoky taste
Turkey Fo-Evah!!!
Elie
@jl:
But how do I get one of those, jl? I always feel that I can see when a bird just doesnt have any fat and that does not bode well for flavor.
Marnie
About your comment concerning free range genetic turkeys.
Which I suspect are not allowed to range freely.
At least in Texas, farm raised turkeys have to be the white cloned turkeys.
It is against the law to farm raise wild turkey stock.
The main reason may be and should be to keep the domestic Franken turkeys from breeding with the wild stock.
One reason to keep them separate is that selling leases for turkey hunting is a profitable business and allows family farmers and ranchers to raise some much needed cash by leasing to hunters.
So the law protects, in effect, a state natural resource.
NotMax
Rarely comment here, but this opinion derived from many decades of Thanksgiving experience is shared:
You will never, ever, serve a mediocre or dry turkey if you start by buying a Kosher turkey.
No idea why they turn out so, so much better (and consistently so), but the proof is in the eating.
Many large chain supermarkets carry the Empire kosher brand (usually packaged pre-brined), or they can be found at smaller kosher-specialty shops.
The very few bucks more they cost over the Frankenbirds are more than worth it for a delicious and impressive main entree.
If forced to use a factory, broth-injected bird, getting a large V-shaped rack and flipping the bird upside-down a few times while it is cooking will allows gravity to have its way with the fats (read: flavor and moisture) re-distributing them and helping to moisturize the gargantu-breasts.
Now if I could just get out of the habit of preparing mounds of both wet and dry stuffing…
ksmiami
Special Michigan natural turkey wrapped in applewood bacon from the butcher with pears, apples and oranges and herbs… roast for 30 minutes at 400, then 3.5 hours at 350 basting every half hour or so. Eat with Williams sonoma sausage sage stuffing and enjoy pure unadulterated fat fest. Once a year and totally worth it!
john smallberries
Dry Brine the Judy Bird way:
1 TBSP kosher salt per 5 lbs, spread over outside of turkey, place in plastic bag in fridge for 3 days or so. Salt disappears, turkey stays moist and tasty. from Russ Parsons in the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fow-turkeyfaq18-2009nov18,0,5750108.story
or http://tinyurl.com/ygh4ykh
A bit of convection at the end will crisp up the skin very nice.
Kitty_Sanchez
mistermix:
It’s too late to order for this year, but this might work well for you next time. I’ll be trying one of these turkeys for the first time this Thanksgiving. If you’re interested, I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Darkrose
Neither of us likes turkey, so we alternate between lamb and Cornish game hens with pomegrante molasses.