A Thanksgiving for the Space Age (Part I)

Let me start off by saying that, honestly, I hate turkey. Of all of the birds, I find it the most tasteless, probably due to its ridiculously low fat content. No, I would rather eat ANY other bird before I would choose turkey. On top of its genetic flaws, most people don't know how to cook it properly, and thus, it turns out dried out. But everyone is polite about it and washes each bite down with some water or wine and trudge their way through the rest of it until they collapse later, over-sated.

Not that great things can't be done with turkey leftovers. My issue is with the connection to tradition which precludes actually cooking a piece of meat properly. I mean, if you had an oven big enough, would you put a whole cow in there and expect it to come out which each part of the animal perfectly done? Of course not. So it goes with turkey.

The problem is the difference in cooking time between breasts and legs. The doneness temperature of turkey is 170F. The problem with the oven is that you have to crank it way higher (probably 400F) to get the turkey to 170F. Surely, you see the room for error here.

What if you could cook something in a medium that stayed a constant 170F? What if you could find a way to harness all of the aromas and flavor (and add some much needed fat into the equation), and ensure none of this would be lost from the turkey?

The method is called 'sous vide' (pronounced 'soo-veyed' (where 'veyed' is pronounced like 'keyed')). It is a French method that means 'under vacuum'. The idea is, if you vacuum seal everything in a bag, and cook it in a medium (water) heated to a precise temperature, two important things happen:

1) No aroma, juice or any other flavor is lost to the pan or the air, it all stays contained within the meat itself because it has nowhere else to go.

2) You cannot overcook the meat because the water (if you monitor it) will not rise above 170F, the perfect doneness temperature for turkey. The turkey, submerged in the liquid and surrounded by this liquid, cannot go higher than 170F.

This thanksgiving is inspired by the cooking of Grant Achatz, award winning chef of Alinea (currently ranked #10 in the world) in Chicago. I am happy to say that Vanessa and I will be eating there Sunday night! We are looking forward to it. You can google 'grant achatz thanksgiving' and it should come up with two videos which will walk you through how he does it.

It's pretty simple:

-break the turkey down into parts
-put them in bags with butter herbs, salt and pepper
-seal them up
-the stuffing goes into a bag, too!
-cook everything in a pot (or pots) of water at 170F for 3 hours.
-briefly brown the turkey off in a hot pan to crisp the skin
-serve

The next post will show the recipes and how it all turned out. Looking forward to it!