Large, Flightless, and Flavorless

The holidays approach. In old timey lingo? “The holidayeth approacheth” (I’m pretty sure). December’s “Peace on Earth” pandemonium will be heralded as usual by the early warning system we call Thanksgiving; a commemoration turkeys movingly refer to as “Pilgrims Are Jerks.” Their naming convention is awkward, their ennui more than understandable.

Today, many enlightened holiday celebrants are opposed to the enslavement and exploitation of animals. In the case of the Thanksgiving Turkey, it’s amazing any such argument need be made at all, because turkey is as inedible as the hagfish and blister beetle. You would think this dumb bird would long since have escaped the prison of human exploitation. Surely Mother Nature herself is puzzled by turkey’s victimhood, having pointedly designed the creature to discourage predation. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. 

“Jeff, a fallen culture that considers the Brussels Sprout a foodstuff will eat anything they can get their hands on.” True enough. Still, turkey occupies its own unique category in the chew while grimacing food group.

We’ve all seen the viral slow motion Wild Kingdom video. A brown bear awakens from its long hibernation ravenous with hunger. Seeing a possible meal, it charges roaring into the forest clearing, slams on the brakes in a cloud of flying dust, and yells into the empty air; “Aww… it’s just a stupid turkey!” It is an extraordinary instance of wildland filmmaking, one the animal rights sector quickly leveraged with its anti-Thanksgiving turkey campaign: A starved bear wouldn’t eat that thing^©. 

Spirits of Ancient Egypt

As a festive holiday food, the turkey has a lot going for it! That’s the insistent seasonal rumor anyway. This faint flirtation with optimism is brutally quashed by a plate copiously stacked with Thanksgiving turkey. The meat is so phenomenally “dry” it defies both fluid mechanics and holiday propriety. The thoughtful Thanksgiving host must keenly watch for signs of mummification as the guests chew and chew (and chew) the centerpiece comestible. Over the course of an hour or so, conversation will dwindle and cease as any hint of moisture is slowly drawn from the vital organs, hallucinations begin in earnest, and the gathered guests are seen to clutch throats, convulse, and cry out in unknown languages. Not to worry! By the end of the festive holiday meal your guests will be speechlessly leaning against one another like the desiccated, staring pharaonic layabouts found in secret chambers under this or that pyramid or ziggurat or whatever. 

Consider the saying turkey with all the trimmings. Now note how rarely the word “turkey” appears without its sidekick “…with all the trimmings.” Why? Because without the trimmings, the turkey is 8-12 lbs. of debilitating cottonmouth shaped vaguely like a bird. The “trimmings” are a complex tactical distraction designed to make this alarming object appear festive and even edible, surrounded by its support army of colorful side dishes. Well, heap on all the stuffing, potatoes, gravy, and Aunt Brunhilde’s startling “Stumproot Mush” you can manage. You will still have to face the turkey. I don’t mean for this holiday message to have the discouraging keynote “no escape!” But there is no escape.

Stuffing

As holiday nouns go, this is one of the more shockingly honest, especially if you’ve ever stood in the kitchen and watched someone partake of this “gratitude ritual.” Whatever indignities the animal was able to avoid in life are visited upon it in the “turkey stuffing” ceremony, which can look more like a post-mortem punishment than a joyous meal prep. If your hairy-forearmed Uncle Carl is angrily yelling “GIT IN THERE!” with every stuffing-thrust, remember that gagging is poor form where gratitude is the keynote. 

Turkeys are in fact surprisingly flavorful, with delicate notes of cedar, saffron, and wildflower. But just in case, it is sometimes useful to immerse a turkey in brine for a day or two. Right? Is there any turkey preparation that more frankly confronts the flavorless bird problem? In fairness, the object of soaking the turkey in brine is not to make it taste like the cubist salt lick in the middle of a cow pasture, but to find some way, any way, to get the bird to retain even a teaspoonful of moisture. 

Why? Why does this bird turn to heavy-duty cotton wadding after a few hours in the oven? Cuz it’s big, weird-shaped, and as inefficient a heat distributor as anything we try to eat in a spirit of celebration.

Turkey vs. Oven. And a Seasonal Mention of Zombies.

The problem is cooking itself, which requires… um… heat? Why is warm food more delicious? We’re told that this is because of the way the TRPM5 in our taste buds is activated by warm foods. TRPM5 is a “cation channel,” a chemical choo-choo (not to infantilize the explanation) that moves signals through cell membranes, triggering sensory experiences like taste. A higher temp on the tongue sends a stronger electrical signal to the brain. You may recall that the brain is that lump of electrified jelly trapped in our heads which decodes the storm of flapdoodle our five senses are sending it every crowded nanosecond. Yes, we’re thankful for our brains, and suitably annoyed at the zombies who would eat them. But… where was I?

Oh, yeah. Heating our food does something less chemically exotic than triggering TRPM5. The heat also kills the microbial life that – if it had its way – would see us projectile vomiting for several days in the wake of a joyous holiday meal. Nobody wants that. Or only a select few of us, anyway. So we need to thoroughly heat our turkey in order to euthanize the microbial jackasses who would otherwise sicken us. Yes, we are all living things in the wondrous celestial panoply of creation. Having said that, 165º will helpfully annihilate your most mischievous living brethren from the bird’s interior. As both Darwin and Pat Benatar have pointed out, “Love is a Battlefield.”

But getting oven heat to thoroughly permeate the turkey, reliably killing off any and all flagellate life? That’s a puzzle that would’ve vexed Einstein in those moments he wasn’t crazily yammering about “curved space” and such. 

The basic problem is one of thermal conduction, which describes how heat moves through solid matter by furtively creeping from particle to particle. In plain language, by the time the heat penetrates to the core of the enormous bird, it has long since turned the outer regions of your turkey to lightly salted fiberglass. The solution is to constantly baste the turkey as you would an imperiled beached dolphin. 

Seasonally Thankful

Gratitude is a seasonal ceremony – a curious tradition in which we gather with family and friends around a table, join hands, and stare with abject horror at the beige, steaming centerpiece – a headless ovoid trussed with twine and wearing lil’ paper anklets. In this setting the obscenely wiggling can-shaped cylinder of cranberry sauce beckons like lobster bisque. 

Here comes December.