'That's Why God Invented Gravy'

"The secret is stuffing," said Camille Klinker of Gambrills, who was picking up a matched pair of organic birds at the Whole Foods in Annapolis yesterday.

"And cooking slowly so there's moisture still left," added her husband, Richard. "If it's too dry, you let it go too long."

Terry Phillips-Seitz of Crownsville is a turkey connoisseur who confesses to trying a Caribbean turkey recipe that he found in The Washington Post a few years ago. Now he's convinced that a deep-fried bird is the best bet.

"It's juicier," he said. "Now, two days later, it doesn't taste a bit different, but when you serve it on Thanksgiving, everybody loves it."

The man standing at Phillips-Seitz's elbow as he perused the Whole Foods turkeys yesterday probably knew more about the birds, and what makes them bland, than anybody in town.

"It's bland if it was frozen six months ago and given the industrial treatment," said Mike Cleary, mid-Atlantic research and development chef for Whole Foods. By coincidence, Cleary was in the store shopping for Thanksgiving dinner.

"A turkey that never walks on land and lives in a building with 10,000 other turkeys and never sees the light of day and always eats the cheapest feed, it's going to be bland," Cleary said. "If it walks on land and mimics the diet it would eat in the wild and more or less has a life before you slaughter it, it's going to have flavor."

It is commonly held that a fresh turkey is going to be better than a frozen bird, but it's equally common to find that people who share that turkey tip have no idea why. Cleary can explain.

"When a turkey is slow-frozen, and most of them are, tiny little icicles form in the meat," he said. "And as you thaw it, the icicles have expanded the meat to form pathways for moisture to escape. That doesn't kill the bird, but if you brine it, that adds some aromatics back into the meat."

You don't need to brine a fresh bird, Cleary said. And if you've got a formerly frozen bird that wasn't brined in the oven, not to worry, Kimball said. You will succeed as a turkey chef if you follow his simple formula.

"Buy a frozen Butterball and roast it at 325 [degrees], just like it says on the package," Kimball said. "Butterballs are injected with brine. If you want a bland moist bird, the Butterball is for you.

"Anyway, that's why God invented gravy."

Kimball says slathering the bird in salt pork will give it flavor because salt pork actually has flavor, while turkey, the breast in particular, has little more appeal than, say, warm cardboard.

Although Kimball does not applaud bland turkey, and says his will not be bland, he invokes the iconic French chef to argue that a bland meat is not necessarily a bad meat.

"A classic French chef would say that some foods are there for the texture, as a base for the sauce or the gravy," he said.

He points to beef tenderloin for illustration.

"The real grain-fed stuff has no flavor," he said. "But most people don't like grass-fed beef because it's chewy and it's very tangy. Americans don't want chewy. They want tender and moist."

And that will be the standard of success at many a Thanksgiving table today: "Moist."