New York Times: After the Bird, Everything Else Is Secondary

By Kim Severson

YOU know how it is with family during the holidays. One smart remark and someone leaves the table in tears.

It wasn’t quite that dramatic at a recent Dining section staff meeting, although we do see one another so much we feel like family.

I was deep into a description of the heritage turkey I had ordered for Thanksgiving, a real beauty that spent nine months running free in a field. I shared that I was feeling conflicted about whether to brine it or stuff it. I opened up. I was vulnerable.

Then my colleague, Julia Moskin, made her flip little comment. “Nobody really cares about the turkey,” she said. “It just has to be good enough.”

I bit my lip. I tamped down the urge to yell, “I know you are but what am I?” and run from the room in tears. Then I decided to show her how wrong she was. We would prepare Thanksgiving dinner together, her on the side dishes and me on the bird. Then we’d see.

I believe from a good turkey all Thanksgiving flows. Norman Rockwell didn’t spend all that time painting pans of sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce, did he? No. He painted turkeys.

From turkey comes stock, the flavor-giving fluid that pumps through the entire meal. Good gravy depends on good stock. So does stuffing (more on our stuffing fight in a moment). Delicious turkey does not come from a 29-cent-a-pound supermarket bird with cottony, bland breast meat. They are, as my favorite turkey breeder says, the Red Delicious apples of turkeys.

A bird that has been bred to reproduce naturally and thrive in the open develops tastier meat. I’ve eaten dozens of both, and I will swear to that basic truth on my favorite turkey platter.

There is a catch. Growing a great turkey takes time and serving one costs money. But if you can afford it, it’s the way to go.

The turkeys from Ayrshire Farm in Upperville, Va., spend their days on pasture and get organic feed. Much attention has been paid to their husbandry. They are certified by the Humane Farm Animal Care program. True, they start at $125. But frankly, no expense was too great in proving Moskin wrong.

I wanted a brine so the meat would still be relatively moist even if it was overcooked. The Ayrshire Farm birds spend six hours in a very light brine. But I needed more insurance.

Since I also wanted to avoid waterlogged meat and a tub full of saline sloshing around the kitchen, I turned to the collective wisdom of Judy Rodgers at the Zuni Café in San Francisco and a couple of well-respected food editors. Ms. Rodgers has long had exceptional results salting chickens long before roasting them. Other food publications have used the technique (also called dry brining) on turkeys with success.

I practiced on a supermarket bird, rubbing in about a half cup of kosher salt and allowing a couple of days for the salt to draw out moisture and then for the meat to reabsorb it. The turkey was juicy and had an unexpectedly deep, meaty flavor — even though I cooked it longer than I might have liked, to allow for the fact that I had stuffed it.

About that stuffing. Usually, I cook it outside the bird. An unstuffed bird is much more reliable in the oven. It cooks faster. And I never thought the stuffing was that much better inside.

At this, Moskin scoffed. The stuffing and the bird are parts of a whole, she said. She was shocked that a Thanksgiving purist such as myself would even consider separating them.

She knew I was uncomfortable stuffing the bird because I didn’t want to throw off my roasting times. Was she just trying to goad me into making a Thanksgiving dinner more to her liking? Or was it a trick?

The only solution: make two turkeys.

On our appointed day, I pulled out my bourbon red and my American bronze about an hour before I was going to roast them. Inside one I placed some onions, apples and fresh thyme. The other I gingerly stuffed with a soft dressing made from chanterelles, pancetta and caramelized pears mixed with white Pullman bread.

I pressed what remained into well-buttered tins to create individual stuffing muffins that would be crisp on the outside and steamy soft inside.

The birds were the talk of the table. O.K., some talk was about how the stuffed bird seemed dry. In my defense, it was the smaller one, and I was a little unsure about the interior temperature.

Let me just say: I rocked the stuffing muffins. Imagine how good they must have been, then times it to the 10th power.

Although the softer stuffing cooked in the bird had its fans, it didn’t please Little Miss Side Dish. “I think the problem is that you didn’t toast the bread,” she pointed out between rounds of praise for her curried sweet potatoes and roasted cauliflower.

I didn’t run from the table. I didn’t cry. I just offered everyone seconds on turkey and passed the gravy. After all, that’s what they really wanted.