In the 17th century, eating turkey meant shooting the wild bird, plucking and cleaning it and roasting it over an open fire. Today’s cooks no longer need to hunt for wild turkey before Thanksgiving, but there are still some decisions they need to make to ensure their Thanksgiving turkey will be perfect.
Before you cook a turkey, you have to buy it. Your local supermarket will have many kinds of commercially bred turkey that you can choose from. You’ll need to decide whether to purchase a frozen bird or a fresh one, and you will also have the option to buy turkeys that are natural, free-range, kosher, self-basting – and even birds that are sold with a pop-up thermometer. Before deciding which bird to buy, you should have decided on a cooking method. Thanksgiving turkey may be roasted, grilled, fried or cooked in a crock pot. You can cook the bird covered or uncovered and you can either stuff it or not. There are also several different ways to season turkey (traditional seasoning, brining, spicy seasoning for fried turkey…).
Self-basting turkeys are injected with a solution of water (or broth) and shortening to ensure that the bird will retain its tenderness as it cooks, but many home cooks continue to prefer basting their turkey themselves. The pop-up thermometers that measure the temperature of the meat in a cooking turkey and ‘pops up’ once it reaches 185 degrees F is considered useful by some home cooks, but many won’t rely entirely on this gadget to test that the bird is done.
Although some believe that frozen turkey is less moist than fresh, modern freezing technology means that there really is no difference in flavor between the two.
When deciding between purchasing a frozen turkey or a fresh one, you should consider how much preparation time is available to you. Frozen turkey needs several days to thaw inside a refrigerator (de-freezing poultry at room temperature is hazardous to your health). If you are buying your turkey a week or more before Thanksgiving, you could opt for a frozen bird. On the other hand, if you need to start cooking the turkey on the day after you buy it, frozen is out of the question. Remember too that cooking a turkey requires several hours, depending on the size of the bird. Consider using one of the many slow cooker recipes for Thanksgiving turkey if you don’t have the time to stay in, or around, your kitchen as it cooks.
To make sure that the turkey you buy will be tasty, always check the age of the bird. Younger birds will have the tender’s meat, but you must also buy the turkey according to the cooking method you will be using. For frying, buy Thanksgiving turkeys that are, at most, four months old. If the turkey will be roasted, it can be anywhere between 5 months and one year old. Some home cooks mistakenly believe that the meat of male turkeys (toms) is tougher than that of female turkeys (hens). The only difference between the two, however, is that toms are larger than hens of the same age. Both will be equally delicious if you cook them correctly and serve them with the right condiments and side dishes.
