As I mentioned before, I’m not cooking this Thanksgiving. Though I get the day off, that doesn’t mean I get to relax completely. In the last week I’ve made two new recipes—one a faithful rendition of Marcella Hazan’s Red Clam Sauce and the other a seat-of-the-pants attempt to recreate the kale, pine nut, and parmesan salad I had the other day at Prune.
The clam sauce brought up strange memories, and the kale salad inspired Santa Maria to such a degree that she declared she could fly. I’ll give full details on these dishes soon. In the meantime, though, I’ll try to answer the question everyone seems to be asking me: how do you cook a turkey?
I have no practical knowledge of such matters, but a lack of experience has never deterred me in the past (I am a parent, after all), and I’ll provide three suggestions.
- Google, in its continued attempt to “make money without doing evil,” kindly put a simple recipe from Ina Garten on its front page yesterday (today it moves on to dessert). Even if you don’t think you can trust the Internet giant, I’m confident you can trust the Barefoot Contessa.
- Our government, which Chinese T-bill buyers consider trustworthy even if a large percentage of our own population does not, has a series of handy tips and suggestions, courtesy of the USDA. They might not win over your foodie friends (One is: “For optimum safety, stuffing a turkey is not recommended”), but at least you won't kill them.
- My favorite recent article about Thanksgiving turkeys ran a few days ago in the New York Times. Ariel Kaminer went to a Halal slaughterhouse in Queens and slit the throat of a Bourbon Red Turkey, which she then took home to cook. Hart Perry, the farmer who bred the bird, suggested doing nothing more than putting it in the oven with a bit of salt and pepper. “Against the advice of two chefs, I did as he said,” Kaminer wrote, “setting the oven to 350 degrees; it was the most flavorful turkey I had ever had.”
I was appalled at the recipe on Google! Everything from the timing of the recipe to checking for doneness is the kind of bad culinary information too often found on the web. I use Rick Rodger’s recipe for roast turkey. It’s cooked at a lower temperature (325) for a longer period of time. The breast is covered with foil for several hours so it doesn’t dry out. And the only way to tell if a bird is done is to use a thermometer. That “until the juices run clear” is bunk. Check out rickrodgers.com for the best TDay recipes. Full disclosure: I was Rick’s editor for his book Thanksgiving 101. And we are close friends, made even closer by frying a turkey in my backyard while recipe testing his book.
Harriet,
Valid points indeed. Thanks for sharing such useful information. Were anyone to cook a turkey from the advice given above, I would hope that for their sake they would look at the USDA link: that explains to cook the bird and stuffing to an internal temperature of 165 degrees. Alas, they don’t offer suggestions for keeping the breast moist. Fortunately we have Rodgers’ advice for that.