Top Carnivore’s Top 10 Thanksgiving Turkey Tips
Just in time for Turkey Day, I thought I’d highlight some of the top tips from the last several weeks of turkey talk.
1. Turkey Wranglers: Everybody needs some table talk for Turkey Day. My favorite bit of Turkey Americana has to be the Gobbler Gaucho of the 19th century. The job of the Turkey Drover, as they were known back in the day, was to herd sometimes thousands of birds across America’s Great Plains and get them to market by Thanksgiving Day. This historic “turkey trot” sometimes lasted hundred of miles, from Kentucky to Tennessee, Vermont to Boston, Missouri to Colorado. As late as 1930, turkey drovers were still walking the Texas panhandle to get their birds to the closest processor.
2. It’s the Bird Stupid: Like with any recipe, ingredients matter. Buying a bird that is responsibly sourced is the best place to start in order to have a delicious Thanksgiving. Our Diestel Farms Organic Turkeys are the best in the biz. Not only are they antibiotic and hormone-free, but they eat 100% GMO-free grain milled at the farm, ensuring you want to be what you eat.
3. What’s Your Turkey’s GPA? There are so many buzzwords when it comes to buying meat. “Pastured,” “free range,” “humane,” “organic.” It can feel overwhelming to the shopper, and more often than not, can be misleading. That’s why Electric City Butcher uses Global Animal Partnership–also known as GAP—to help straighten things out. Not only does GAP have one of the most comprehensive, third-party-audited approaches to animal welfare, but they also boil everything down to a Sesame Street-easy number system. Ranked in five levels, or what GAP calls “Steps,” farms and ranches are evaluated in the areas of Health & Productivity, Natural Living, and Emotional Well Being (of the animal you guys, although Farmer wellbeing could be a blog post all its own). Our birds get a perfect score.
4. Salt is King: When it comes to whole animal cooking, it’s especially hard to thoroughly season your proteins. That’s why we recommend brining your bird for at least 12 hours before you bake it. Dunking that gobbler in a saline solution (90 minutes per pound for no more than 24 hours) allows the bird to really soak up the flavor. If you add aromatics like rosemary, garlic, cloves, or juniper berries to your brine, those salt crystals will have the added bonus of carrying Holiday smells deep into the bird.
5. Temper…temper…temper: No, I’m not talking about coping with the In-Laws. The real secret to making sure that bird isn’t under/overcooked is to temper. Time and again, life gets in the way of good cooking and folks forget to let their meats come to room temperature before throwing them in the oven. Germophobes, listen up! You’re more likely to get salmonella from an undercooked bird than an over-tempered one. Let that turkey rest on the counter for AT LEAST two hours before putting it in the oven. This ensures no pink parts when it comes out of the oven.
6. Don’t Stuff, Dress: My culinary guiding light, Alton Brown says it best, when it comes to stuffing in the Turkey cavity, “Just don’t do it!” Instead, put some rosemary, or thyme, garlic or juniper in there. Maybe add a couple of wedges of citrus to impart wondrous aromas to your meat and gravy. Make the dressing in a separate casserole dish. And if you’re dying to add some turkey drippings to your stuffing, bake your stuffing a little dry and drizzle it with some liquid gold from the bottom of the roasting pan before you put the rest into the gravy.
7. Turkey Day Movie Night: After the food comma, when you need a family-friendly activity, check out The Biggest Little Farm. This enchanting, beautifully shot, and whimsical film lays out the agrarian ecosystem in an approachable and compassionate story about the good, the bad and the ugly of farm life without being too utopian. It also resulted in one of the most thought-provoking conversations I’ve ever had with my kids. Seeing three children—seven, ten and 12—realize very different and important concepts that I’d missed during the movie, reinforced how powerful video can be for educating our kids.
8. Basting=browning: A lot of people complain about basting because it slows the cooking time. However, I find it evens out the browning process, and ensures moist white meat (an elusive achievement in turkey cooking). My favorite basting liquid is a bottle of cheap Chablis and a stick of butter. Keep the liquid in a pot on the stove (hot but not boiling), and add a few squirts every 20 minutes to the bird. After two hours, the pot should be empty with the entire contents in the roasting pan. If it’s a big bird, continue to baste from the drippings in the roasting pan every time you check the temp.
9. Take a Break: When your bird reads 160 degrees on your trusty digital thermometer (NO “buttons” or analog temp gauges allowed) it’s time to take it out of the oven. But WAIT! You have to rest the meat before you carve. Account for at least 30 minutes of resting to let the bird finish cooking, and the meat to retain any remaining moisture. Otherwise, you’ll be burning your hands carving through your bird while all that delicious liquid you worked so hard to lock in, dribbles off the cutting board and onto the floor.
10. Perfect Wishbone: Don’t we all like a good holiday tradition? And who doesn’t need a bit more luck in their lives? That’s what I love about the Thanksgiving turkey wishbone. But for years, I could never get the damn thing to snap. The kids were tugging and pulling on it to no avail. If you want an easy-to-break wishbone, and a much easier to carve turkey, remove the wishbone first (Google for the best technique), and put it in the bottom of the roasting pan. Not only will it add a little more flavor to the gravy, but it will make slicing white meat a breeze, and brittle up nicely for that satisfying luck-inducing snap!
YOU CAN STILL RESERVE AN ORGANIC TURKEY FROM ELECTRIC CITY BUTCHER ALONG WITH OUR FAMOUS HOLIDAY STUFFING SAUSAGE, GRAVY AND CRANBERRY SAUCE!