Tough Turkey

Photo by Scott Elmquist

Isn't that the most gorgeous  turkey you've ever, ever seen?  Click on that baby and bask in the wide-screen version for a moment.  Wouldn't you love to put that in the middle of your Norman Rockwell dining room table this Thursday?

Sadly, it's raw.  Really raw.  It was only in the oven about 30-40 minutes, tops.  And then I painted it with a combination of Kitchen Bouquet (you suspected there had to be another reason I bought it, other than for Swedish Meatballs, didn't you?), Angostura bitters , and vegetable oil.  Tasty, huh? 

That's why your turkey never looks like the ones on the cover of all the food magazines.  It's not your fault that even though you follow the directions from the Joy of Cooking or Cooks Illustrated assiduously, yours gets a little burned in spots and is a little pale in others.  And once you've let it rest while you make the gravy and herd all of the guests to the dining room, your turkey also looks decidedly withered.

Here's what mine looked like after the photo was taken:

After you take a turkey out of the oven, it releases steam and the skin will start shriveling immediately.  That's why mine had to be raw; otherwise it wouldn't have that lovely, plump physique that looks so tempting on the page.

So, stop kicking yourself.  Just like the airbrushed, anorexic models giving us all body-image nightmares, magazine food--while it is real food--is also faked to appear all the more enticing. But we all knew that anyway.

If you'd like to read all about how to cook a turkey three different ways this Thanksgiving (which is essentially a riff on what I did last Thanksgiving), click on this link to Home Style--now online, better late than never.

Comments

[ellen]

ha-ha-this really made me laugh however, our deep fried turkey comes out dark mahogany...then it is ripped to shreads as everyone loves our fried wonder!!

[Deborah Dowd]

I knew about photoshopping and airbrushing of women in Playboy, thanks for debunking the photo food so that I can stop trying to attain the impossible with my food as well!

[Michele]

I was just doing this Kitchen Bouquet bullshit last week, only I had to cook the turkey through because we were going to take lots of plated shots of sliced breast. No time or budget for backup turkey so I was slicing for my life. Somehow it all worked out.