Talking Turkey With Eric Kim

03.12.2024 - 22:53 / atlasobscura.com

This article is adapted from the November 23, 2024, edition of Gastro Obscura’s Favorite Things newsletter. You can sign up here.

I need to get something off my chest that has been bugging me for years: Turkey doesn’t get the respect it deserves (my colleague, Sam O’Brien, agrees with me here). For years, I feel the American public has been fed this lie that eating turkey for the holidays is a concession to tradition rather than something anyone enjoys. We roast a turkey out of a sense of familial duty, we’re told, but the mac n’ cheese, the mashed potatoes, the sweet potato casserole, those are for love.

Yes, it’s true that we’ve done a number of great injustices to this noble bird over the years, most crucially breeding the Broad Breasted White to monstrous, unsustainable proportions, but that should not besmirch the reputation of less inbred birds.

And yes, it’s true that turkey may not have been on the menu at the first Thanksgiving (most historians believe that other wildfowl were more likely candidates). But who cares? Virtually all of the dishes and much of the mythology of Thanksgiving were developed long after the Pilgrims. Even the current date was established centuries later by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who moved it earlier in November to extend the holiday shopping season.

Most people believe that dry turkey is an inevitable fact of life because 1) they personally had a bad one once 2) they’ve heard the phrase repeated so many times they believe it to be true—a sort of poultry Mandela Effect. Frustrated, I called up Eric Kim, a food journalist at the New York Times, who was tasked with coming up with this year’s turkey recipe for the publication.

“I don’t want to be too navel-gazey, but food media is an echo chamber and people keep publishing the same words because it’s a grind,” Kim says. “Over time, the narrative has become, no one really cares about the turkey. It’s always dry. That’s literally the copy you write before you introduce the side dish or whatever recipe you’re trying to sell.”

Kim, who has previously tackled Thanksgiving classics like stuffing and green bean casserole, acknowledges that he wasn’t initially thrilled when told it was his year to take on the bird. “It’s a rite of passage or a hazing,” he says. “But as a food writer at the New York Times, you have to take the turkey at least once in your career.”

For a recipe developer—or ambitious home cook—part of the frustration with this fowl is that there isn’t much room for innovation. Love it or hate it, the annual turkey is comforting in its sameness. It would taste better if you deep-fried it, but not everyone has the equipment or emotional fortitude. And it would be delicious if you confit the legs or even just