Thanksgiving Turkey: Shopping And Cooking Tips
The Fourth of July and Thanksgiving are the two most important national holidays celebrated in the United States. Every country in the world has its national day, but Thanksgiving is a strictly American holiday, celebrated only in the U.S. and Canada. In the U.S., Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November, and marks the commemoration of the first corn harvest reaped by the Plymouth Colony in 1621. On that occasion, the Pilgrim Fathers hosted a feast to which they invited their Native American neighbors, to thank God for their bountiful harvest and for having survived the bitter New England winter. It has become customary for families to gather around a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving, a reminder of the wild turkey eaten by the Pilgrims on that first Thanksgiving feast.
The Thanksgiving turkeys Americans eat today are very different from the wild birds caught and cooked by the early American settlers. They are commercially bred to be large and meaty, and are available in many varieties. For today’s cooks, the challenge is choosing among the many Thanksgiving turkey options available at local supermarkets, and deciding upon a cooking method to use once they have bought the turkey. The tips in this article should help make these decisions easier.
Turkey choices have increased tremendously over the years. Cooks today need to decide whether to purchase fresh or frozen turkey, and to choose between the many available turkey ‘varieties’ such as free-range, kosher, self-basting turkeys or even turkeys with a pop-up thermometer! It wasn’t very long ago that a cook had to depend solely on his or her skills (there were no pop-up thermometers or self-basting birds) to successfully roast a turkey that was well cooked, but not too dry. Once you have selected a turkey, you’ll need to decide on a cooking method. Depending on your personal taste, you could roast turkey in your oven, grill it barbecue-style, fry it or slow cook it in a crock pot. You’ll also have to decide whether you want to stuff your bird and how you are going to season it (traditional seasoning rubbed into the exterior of the bird, brining in saltwater, spicy Cajun seasoning for fried turkey etc).
Purists among home chefs still prefer fresh turkey without additives such as the water and oil pumped into a self-basting turkey. Some will concede that the pop-up thermometer is a helpful gadget, but still not an infallible test of a completely done turkey.
So what kind of turkey should a home cook get for Thanksgiving? The choice is pretty much up to the cook’s preference. Some cooks insist that frozen turkeys lose their flavor because freezing causes a loss of moisture. Others will say they’ve eaten frozen turkey for years and never noticed a difference.
When deciding between a frozen and a fresh turkey, think about how much time you have to cook your Thanksgiving meal. If you are buying the turkey the night before Thanksgiving, you have no other option but to buy a fresh bird; a frozen one won’t have time to de-frost. It takes several days to defreeze a turkey in the fridge (thawing poultry in the open, on a kitchen counter is unsafe). The size of the bird determines how long it will take to thaw – as well as how many hours it will take to roast it. If you use slow cooker recipes to cook your Thanksgiving turkey, you can go about your business as the turkey cooks.
Beyond prep time, the other biggest factor for a flavorful bird is the turkey’s age. Succinctly, younger turkeys will have better taste. Turkeys for frying should be no older than four months, while roasters can be 5 months to one year old. It really doesn’t matter whether the turkey is a hen (female) or a tom (male). Either one will taste delicious if it’s properly prepared – especially when topped with turkey gravy and accompanied by a mound of mashed potatoes and a dab of cranberry sauce.
Michelle is an experienced contributor whose niche is blogging about simple and easy, but delectable, home cooking. Her content pieces generally stress the advantages of crockpot recipes such as slow cooker recipes, which is one of her absolute favorites.
