Meatwatch: Turkey

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Look, we know what you’re thinking: This is by far one of our worst pun-based ideas. But Greg gets real pissy if we don’t let him just go to town roasting something, both literally and figuratively, every thirty to three hundred days or so. And so we present: Turkey.

“The freedom of birds is an insult to me. I’d have them all in zoos” - Blood Meridian, about Thanksgiving probably.

Well well well. It’s the best week of the season, assuming you live in America. I realize that this is actually not a good week by objective standards, especially if you live in the future crater that will one day be formerly known as America, but it’s a relative maximum - it’s better than the last one because of the four-day weekend, and it’s better than the next will be because that’s how declines work. Every day is a little worse than the day before, unless it’s one of the ones your boss lets you stay home and plan your day around eating a big lunch.

I dunno man, don’t really have jokes for this one. We are not collectively living in the part of the space-time continuum where it feels appropriate to clown. Even many of our hottest Takes can’t escape the event horizon of the bad vibes. The good news is that It Happened - sooner or later - to all the worst people in the past, and one day It Will Happen to the worst people in the present. To take the edge off the wait, what I suggest is that you use the long weekend to think about some cool Americans, such as John Brown, the astronauts who conquered the moon, and pretty much no one else.

If going nuts on a big plate is part of your plan, you are in luck. As a treat, Goonhammer’s very own John Condit is here to talk about the lengths to which he will go in order to make America’s bland overweight rat bird into something slightly appetizing. This particular arrangement resulted in one of my very favorite Meatswatch, about Glogg, so we’re back at it.

Two quick disclaimers first. One, an acknowledgement to our non-American readers that this is not really anything you relate to or care about. Frankly I’m not all that worried about running such a locally-oriented Meatwatch, because you are either living in a better place and you've got to just let me have this one because it’s all I've got, or you’re English and I don’t think your feelings count. Either way, I felt it was worth noting.

The second is that as a food turkey is - objectively - not as good as ham, the other meat of today. But the accessories I think, on balance, give it the W. The bird itself is whatever - even the dark meat isn’t that good - but once you pile it under and around cranberry sauce, stuffing, and gravy, you’ve got a solid plate going. Also, all of those items can combine their energy like a spirit bomb into a sandwich capable of defeating any hunger.

Regrettably and unavoidably, it is Turkey Time. Condit first, then me.

Condit and The Bird

Between us, my dad and I have been cooking Thanksgiving turkeys for various family gatherings for years now, and we’ve gotten pretty good at it. It turns out that if you’re willing to put in the time and effort, you can make a really fucking good turkey. The downsides are that (1) the process takes like 3 days with a fresh one, and (2) a really fucking good turkey is still usually roughly equivalent to replacement-level chicken. We’re happy with the results, though, so if you’d like to follow us into the depths of holiday-related insanity once again (this time alcohol-free, I promise), what follows is a blow-by-blow of how we made this year’s Thanksgiving centerpiece.

Fun fact: one of my brother-in-law’s least favorite things about marrying into my family is that we call our Thanksgiving turkey “The Bird.” It honestly wasn’t even something I realized we did until my sister told me it drove her husband up the wall. That, as it happens, turned out to be a mistake, especially now that I have a website I can send him a link to Thanksgiving evening.

Finding Your Bird

So before you can cook your bird, you’re going to need to source one. Frozen is fine, I guess, but it also means you have to clear a giant hole in your fridge for 3 days over the weekend before Thanksgiving so it can thaw properly, so we always buy a fresh one. As a general rule, buy about a pound and a half of turkey for everyone who’s in attendance. If you have a lot of people who like dark meat, divide the result in half and get two birds of that size. But most gatherings will find a massive, genetically-engineered monstrosity at the center of their tables. This year, we’re hosting like 15 people so I have reserved a glorious Twenty-Pound Bird and am just going to have to hope it’ll be enough.

You’ll want to make sure you pick it up well in advance of T-Day, as this process will need to start on Tuesday night. That means you can pick up your fresh turkey as late as Tuesday afternoon, but if you got a frozen one I recommend starting the thawing process early Friday, especially if it’s a big one.

Drowning Your Bird

Now to actually start work on it. You’re going to start by brining your bird in a big plastic bag. If you’re smart, you’ll brine it in two bags: one that contains the turkey, and the other that contains the turkey and the bag it’s in for when the first bag inevitably springs a leak. You can usually find bags that claim to be “brining bags” for sale next to the frozen turkeys at your local store, but any food-grade plastic bag that’s big enough will work. Ziploc also makes a big brining bag that my dad prefers, but ultimately you just need a big bag that won’t leach chemicals into your food for at least 3 days.

Before you get started, you’ll want to reserve space for your bird to rest for the next two days or so. While it will need to stay cold, I recommend not actually storing the thing in your fridge. First, it’s huge and will take up most of the space in your fridge, leaving you without room to store any of the other bullshit you’re planning on putting on the table next to it or, for that matter, whatever you’re planning to subsist on for the next 2 days. Second, when your backup bag also springs its inevitable leak, at least you don’t have to spend 6 hours cleaning out the entire interior of your fridge and freezer. I usually use either one of those big buckets from Lowe’s or Home Depot, or a cheap cooler, either of which is packed with ice and cold packs. The bucket will be less expensive, but the cooler is fun because you can fool yourself into believing that this year will finally be the year when the bag doesn’t spring a leak and you get to use the cooler to store drinks in.

Condad’s Turkey Brine

1 cup salt (dissolved in ½ gal water)

3 Tbsp black peppercorn

5 bay leaves

2 tbsp granulated garlic

4 sprigs rosemary

4 – 6 sprigs thyme

4-6 sage leaves

10 whole allspice

10 whole cloves

1+ star anise pod

10 – 20 juniper berries

Orange rind

Lemon rind

2 cups orange juice

½ gal apple juice

The steps here are real simple: mix all this shit up, put the bird in its bag in the appropriate receptacle, then pour everything in and agitate slightly. Make sure you get some in both of the cavities. Then squeeze as much of the air out of the bag as possible so you have as much bird below sea level as possible, and seal it up. Let it sit overnight, then either flip the turkey over or swirl it around in the bag sometime Wednesday evening, reupping your ice if it’s melted because you live somewhere hateful like Florida. If you live in the Frigid Northlands and the forecast isn’t too cold that it’ll freeze you can just stick it in your garage I guess?

Go to sleep early. You’re going to need it.

Rubbing Your Bird

The next step will start on Thursday morning at an unreasonable hour for a holiday. The time needed to cook a turkey thoroughly while still maintaining any semblance of edibility is best measured by geologists, so if you’re targeting 4pm dinner service you’ll need to be ready to go somewhere between 6:30 and 7:30am, depending on how large of one you’ll be cooking. This, incidentally, is why we don’t eat at 2pm like most of my friends’ families: we’re obviously willing to do some absolutely deranged things to celebrate a holiday, but there is no way you are going to get me out of bed at 4:30 in the goddamn morning on a national holiday if I’m not getting paid for it.

Take the bird out of its bag, set it on a big pan, and pat it dry with some paper towels. Then you’ll want to mix up a rub and slather it all over. Any rub you like for poultry will do, but if you want a Condad-Approved Thanksgiving, here’s what to mix up:

Condad’s Turkey Herb Rub

3 Tbsp tarragon

3 Tbsp oregano

3 Tbsp dill

3 Tbsp coarse salt

2 Tbsp lemon pepper

1 Tbsp granulated garlic

You’ll throw all this in a bin and stir it up until it’s more or less uniform. Reserve a tablespoon or so of the resulting mixture for later. Next, you’ll want to wipe the turkey down with a towel dipped in oil. Then you’ll spread this rub over the entire bird and massage it in. Make sure to get it everywhere; it’s easy to miss the little creases and folds under the legs and wings. We also make sure to get some in both the main and neck cavities, though you can go a little lighter there.

Stuffing Your Bird

We don’t actually cook our stuffing in the bird. Over the years, dad has come to believe that doing so only makes the thing even drier than it would be otherwise, and mom loves baking things anyway, so she handles that while we deploy Exciting New Thanksgiving Technology:

Aromatics.

These are edible things that smell good that you put in your bird’s cavity. Dad insists that putting these in there in lieu of stuffing is the key to getting the tender, juicy bird that everyone will love. I don’t know if that’s actually the case, but we’ve been doing it for years and every resulting bird has been a big hit, so who am I to argue with results? Correlation may not have been enough to imply causation last year, but I’ll take any wins I can get in Bobby K.’s exciting new hellscape.

Condad’s Turkey Aromatics

1 lg apple (quartered)

1 sweet onion (quartered)

2 med oranges (quartered)

2 lemons (quartered)

10 – 12 cloves

10 – 12 whole allspice

3 – 4 cinnamon sticks

1 Tbsp of the herb rub you just made a few minutes ago

Put all this stuff in a big bowl, fill it about half full with water, then throw it in the microwave for a minute. Then shove it into both the main and neck cavities.

Folding Your Bird

Trussing a bird is pretty easy, actually. You just sort of fold the wing flaps around so they “lock in” behind the neck, then lay the bird down on its back, pull the legs up, and tie them together with twine. This will help it sit nicely while it’s being cooked, and if done properly can also help keep your aromatics from spilling out the back of the cavity. If you don’t have twine to tie the legs together, you can get away without doing so. But definitely tuck the wings in, as they help keep your bird from rolling over once you’ve got it in to be cooked.

Smoking Your Bird

You can grill or roast your dinner if you’d prefer, but if you’re still following along with us, you’ll need a smoker. Did I forget to mention that? Whoops. For anything about 16 lbs or less, you’re looking at about a 6-hour cook time, but get any larger and it’ll be on there all day. Our Twenty-Pound Bird will have sat bathed in glorious wood smoke for what would be an impressive 8 hours or so by the time it’s ready to be eaten, if it weren’t for the children who will doubtless be badgering us for constant updates on the precise percentage of the process that has been completed to that point.

Anyway, here’s the wood we’ll be using:

Condad’s Thanksgiving Wood Mix

Half pecan

Half fruit wood (Condad recommends some mix of apple and cherry. The ratio varies, but at time of publishing he was leaning more toward cherry)

1 – 2 chunks mesquite (Per Condad: to get some “bite” without overwhelming the flavor of the bird)

I haven’t actually taken the time to learn how to smoke meat like my dad, so I have no idea whether this is actually a sane thing to do with wood or not. But given everything else we’ve been through together in the past few days, I am going to (as, presumably, you will) assume it is not. You’ll want to keep the smoker somewhere around 250 or so and let that thing go for basically ever. Allow for 30 minutes per pound, but stick a temperature probe in there and look for it to hit about 155 or 160. Pull it off, wrap it in foil, and let it rest for a few minutes to finish cooking itself and get to 165 in the breast.

If you don’t want to go through the trouble of smoking it, you can grill it or roast it. If you go that route, it’ll take roughly 15 minutes per pound to thoroughly cook at 350 degrees. If you go the grill route, we recommend using indirect heat: put the bird on the grill with a big tray underneath it to catch any drippings, and have the coals (or burners, I guess, if you’ve got a gas grill) going on either side of it so it’s not directly over the flames.

Serving Your Bird

And that’s it! Cut off the legs and wings, slice the breast off, and serve. Discard the aromatics, and save the carcass to make stock with later if you want to: turkey soup can be pretty good if you’re working with a solid recipe.

Greg’s Turkey

My wife makes it.
It tastes good.

That’s all there is. Enjoy the holiday or don’t, not really my business either way.

Thanks for sticking around, and making this column what it is: a little-read corner of this website that exists solely for me to waste your time and get yelled at. If you have questions or comments, let us know at contact@goonhammer.com, or right here in the comments. Meatwatch is here to help.

Tags: Greg | meatwatch | thanksgiving | turkey | ham