Thanksgiving food science: Five holiday flubs explained

Instead, tilt the pan (after removing the turkey, vegetables and other solids) and use a flexible spatula to scrape all the liquids into a gravy separator. The liquids will settle into two distinct layers: fat on top and watery juices on bottom. The bottom layer can then be poured into the broth to enhance its flavor.

With the roasting pan set over a range burner or two, measure the amount of fat in the separator, pour it back into the pan and whisk in an equal measure of flour to form a roux. That coats the flour particles with water-impenetrable fat so they can’t stick together to make lumps. Cook it for a couple of minutes until it begins to take on color; this will mellow the flour’s raw taste and make the gravy beautifully brown. When you then whisk in the broth, the fat-coated flour particles will become homogeneously dispersed throughout the liquid.

Gallery

Thanksgiving recipes from the White House: First-family favorites like Laura Bush’s green beans or Mamie Eisenhower’s pumpkin pie add personality to the holiday spreads in America’s most famous home.

Video

Washington Post food editor Bonnie Benwick brings some tips of the trade to The Fold set and shows us how to bring our best mashed potatoes to the Thanksgiving table.

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The final step is to cook the whole mixture at a low temperature, which strips the fat coating from the starch grains. They then take on water, swell and rupture, releasing their glutinous content and evenly thickening the liquid. So no lumps. The fat is still there, but it is spread out in such tiny globules that they can’t coalesce into puddles. So no grease.

Crispy skin

What is the chemical makeup of chicken skin? How bad for you is it, nutritionally, if the fat beneath it has been rendered during cooking?

In recent years, chicken skin has been scorned as a nutritional bete noire, along with salt, sugar, saturated fats and virtually anything that has been refined by human intervention. The abominable boneless, skinless (and may I add tasteless) chicken breast has become ubiquitous.

I can understand ditching the bones, but I and many other people insist that the skin is the best thing about a roasted chicken or turkey, in terms of flavor and texture.

Raw chicken skin consists of about 13 percent protein, 32 percent fat and 55 percent water. Turkey skin is 13 percent protein, 39 percent fat and 48 percent water. Those components are arranged, as in many other animals (including us mammals), in three layers of cells: the outer epidermis, the middle dermis and the inner hypodermis. The proteins, mainly collagen, elastin and keratin, are distributed throughout the layers in different amounts: collagen and elastin mostly in the dermis and the fat (adipose) cells mainly in the hypodermis. Elastin makes the skin somewhat rubbery. It is actually stretched over the bird’s body under tension, like a wet suit on a scuba diver.

The fat, of course, is the source of some people’s nutritional concern. According to the USDA, raw chicken fat contains 9 percent saturated, 14 percent monounsaturated and 7 percent polyunsaturated fatty acids. (Turkey: 11 percent saturated, 15 percent monounsaturated and 12 percent polyunsaturated.) This works out to about 3 grams of saturated skin fat per pound of whole chicken. An ounce of the skin of turkey has 3 grams of saturated fat. During roasting, much of the fat is rendered and drips to the bottom of the pan, so by the time it gets to the table, there’s even less fat in the skin.