Everything else is going to cost more this year
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- November 9, 2023
- 561
With Thanksgiving looming unexpectedly near, there’s some good news: Turkeys should be in good supply and a little cheaper. Prices have been falling bit by bit, and we’re close enough now to the holiday to be confident they shouldn’t see a late-game spike.
According to the USDA, you can get a bird for 43 cents per pound less than in 2022, and this is the lowest prices have been in a few years. The lucky break for us comes as farmers boosted flocks over the summer while the cost of hauling frozen turkeys in refrigerated trucks also has dropped a bit.
That’s the good news. The balancing news, shall we say, is everything else is going to cost more. From canned cranberry sauce and pumpkin to potatoes, the side dishes will step in to empty your wallet of the change the turkey leaves behind.
The Thanksgiving turkey is such a linchpin to the entire celebratory meal that we tend to stick with what works. I’ve been using the same Martha Stewart recipe for roasting a turkey for a very long time because it’s always a success. And why mess with that? The one or two times we tried something new, we were unhappy with the result. So we stick with the same turkey and stuffing dear Martha dictated in her salad days.
There are many ways to do a turkey, of course, and the deep fried version is something I’ve tasted and liked. I would never in a million years attempt such a thing on my own as a member of the “never run with scissors” school of caution. The idea of a bubbling vat of hot oil on the patio, the volume of which must be exactly right, is just too worrisome. Add a feral toddler to the mix and it’s a no-go.
The same caution is paired in my mind with doing a turkey on a smoker. My friend, the late Bob Jacobs, once did a turkey in his backyard smoker, and it nearly killed him prematurely.
Jacobs, who woke generations of Tuscarawas County residents for work each morning on the radio, was a big enthusiast for smoking meats and knew what he was about. Nevertheless, he made a critical error one year: He stopped in the middle of turkey prep to make himself a cold sandwich without stopping to scrub first.
The result was a severe case of food poisoning that sent him to the hospital for days and left him with a long recovery time. You won’t catch me trying to smoke a turkey because I remember my friend’s lasting pallor after his mistake. As he said at the time, “I knew better.” It can happen to anyone, and that anyone ain’t gonna be me.
We usually have a small group to share our Thanksgiving dinner, so we start with a bird as close to 10 pounds as possible. It gets stuffed with the sausage, bread cube and kale dressing we’ve tinkered with and perfected over the years, then covered with a generous square of cheesecloth that has been soaked in dry white wine heated with melted butter.
During the roasting time, more buttered wine is spooned over the cheesecloth until near the end, when the cloth comes off and the breast is allowed to brown up to a rich mahogany. All that wine from the bottom of the pan, married to the juices from the roasting bird, goes into the gravy for an amazing finish. If you have a mind to give this method a try, you can find Martha’s recipe online by searching for “turkey 101.”
No matter what method of preparation your family uses, remember my cautionary tales. Poultry can make you royally sick if you aren’t scrupulously careful in keeping your workspace and yourself very clean. And if you attempt something dicey like deep frying, be sure you know exactly what you’re doing beforehand, even if the bird was cheap.