In the annals of Thanksgiving lore, there's a fact of life that's rarely acknowledged. Some people don't like turkey. And I'm convinced I know why: The turkeys Americans like to showcase at the holiday table are simply too big.
Those huge birds the color of shiny mahogany may look beautiful, smell wonderful and seem like an achievement worthy of a culinary school diploma. But, ranging from 20 to 24 pounds, they're practically impossible to cook. And they often come to the table with dry, leathery breast meat or undercooked legs and thighs.
If you're the cook, and this scenario seems familiar, it's not your fault. All turkeys are a little tricky because the white meat cooks more quickly than the dark meat. Ideally, they should be cooked to two different temperatures (170 degrees for the white meat and 180 degrees for the dark). As birds get bigger, balancing the two types of meat gets more difficult.
But there is a solution: Roast a 12- to 14-pound turkey. Roast two of them. You'll never turn back.
Think about what roasting a huge turkey sets you up for: No matter what recipe is used, to avoid overcooking you have to pay close attention, and big birds need to be tended over a long period of time. That's hard when you're making many more dishes than you would for an ordinary dinner.
That lengthy cooking time makes an evening meal virtually inevitable, too, which is fine if you want to watch football games but challenging for families with young children or for people who like to go to bed before midnight.
What about people who don't cook much but feel the need to produce on the holiday? They may not have the right pots and pans. And not everybody has a refrigerator big enough to store and defrost a turkey or an oven that is high enough and wide enough to ensure a large bird will be properly roasted. If I didn't have an old refrigerator in the basement, I don't know where I'd defrost my turkey. (And remember, recommended defrosting time is calculated at about 24 hours for each five pounds of turkey. So a 20-pound turkey will have to sit in the refrigerator for at least four days.) Then there are the leftovers, which in theory are fine but in reality often sit in the refrigerator losing their pep as family members back away from the thought of another turkey-based meal.
"The leftovers usually go to waste," says Susan Lindeborg, chef at the Majestic Cafe in Alexandria, who generally roasts an 18- to 20-pound turkey at home even if it's just for her and her husband. "We really love to eat the turkey later, but a lot of people don't like to."
How did things come to this? When the pilgrims came, did they have such big birds for dinner? Probably not. Even in the past couple of centuries, big was not necessarily better.
According to Andrew F. Smith, editor of the recently released Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America (Oxford University Press), during the late-19th and early-20th centuries, 12- to 15-pound turkeys were favored throughout the United States. And at that time, the main goal of breeders was to produce specific colored feathers in their birds -- varieties of bronze feathers with green, copper and purple sheens.
In the first part of the 20th century, things began to change, Smith says, when breeders in Oregon and other points west began to concentrate on the amount of meat on turkeys, rather than the color of their feathers. Then in the late 1920s, Jesse Throssel, an Englishman who had moved to Canada, imported some turkeys from England, where meatier birds were popular. In 1930, he exhibited them at a livestock show in Portland.
"No one in Oregon had ever seen such turkeys," says Smith. "They created quite a stir."
Throssel had bred bronze turkeys with white-feathered ones. Other breeders bought Tom turkeys from him, mated them with hens that had already been selected for their meat-producing qualities, and there was no looking back. The resulting crossbreeds rapidly replaced the earlier turkeys. And in 1938 the name Broad Breasted Bronze (BBBs, for the color of their feathers as well as their meaty breasts) was adopted for the new birds.
"The main result was the development of the modern turkey industry," says Smith. "In the 1950s, the standard became white feathers, [but] virtually all commercial turkeys today are strains of the BBB."
