FLAVOR: TRADITIONAL THANKSGIVING TURKEY IS BEST SERVED WITH A DRAWL
Traditional Thanksgiving turkey is best served with a drawl
THANKSGIVING turkey is the great over-compensator.
It’ll do just about anything to get us to like it. It’ll endure injections of marinade; overnight water-logged wading in brine; immersions in bubbling cauldrons of hot oil; slow suffocations of wood smoke; beautifying plaster-ings of butter, spices and herbs. It will submit to being force-fed apples, onions and citrus wedges. Old Tom will even lie on its back and bake if that’s what makes you happy.
And it’s that willingness to please that compels us to take liberties with the bird that is the centerpiece of our most important meal of the year. In our effort to create a memorable family dinner, are we, like Mr. Gobble-Gobble, overreaching? Is a simple, traditional bird the best bet?
“When it comes to turkey most people are looking for simple, easy recipes — something that’s not going to intimidate them,” said David Tamarkin, editor of Epicurious.com, a popular recipe website for home cooks.
Though simple is good, Thanksgiving also carries with it the weight of extravagance. This meal — the biggest cooking day for all home cooks — has to wow. Flavor is crucial.
But that’s also what makes turkey the ideal culinary focal point of Thanksgiv-
ing. It welcomes flavors gladly, especially regional flavors and foodways.
“The Thanksgiving turkey is endlessly customizable. You can choose a new brine, rub, glaze, butter, stuffing or gravy and turn your bird into something that’s completely different from your neighbor’s,” said Liz Sgroi, food director for Food Network Magazine. “This year, our test-kitchen chefs made an amazing ancho-spiced turkey with chipotle gravy — very southwestern. My family’s turkey is a little more New England: a maple butter under the skin and dried cranberries in the stuffing.”
In the South, there’s no shortage of regional ingredients that tie the turkey to a specific place. Bourbon, satsumas, native pecans, cornbread, Creole spices and mustard, boudin, buttermilk, cane syrup — all play supporting roles to the turkey and its stuffing or dressing.
This year we asked Southern Goods, the new Heights restaurant from Charles Bishop and Lyle Bento that speaks with a distinct Southern drawl, to create a Dixie-inspired turkey recipe. They made a beaut stuffed with satsumas, rubbed with butter and Creole seasonings and then glossed with a cane syrup and canevinegar reduction.
“One of the more popular flavor profiles in the South is the aspect of sweet and sour,” said JD Woodward, chef de cuisine of Southern Goods. The cane vinegar is crucial to that flavor “pop” of the sweet and sour, he added.
“One of the biggest mistakes home cooks make is the absence of acid. Acid sharpens flavors,” Woodward said. “It makes everything else stand out. It’s an enhancer.”
In addition to the cane-syrup reduction, the Southern Goods bird gets a savory boost via butter and Creole seasonings massaged between the meat and the skin before roasting.
“People are really open to doing regional takes on their turkey even if they live outside the region because they want to try something different,” Tamarkin said. “The South is in the best position to flavor turkey in a different way.”
Our Southern Goods turkey not only uses a simple recipe, it gobbles with a drawl.