The Unbearable Whiteness of White Meat
Dark meat is better. Why don't we love it more?
Thanksgiving turkey: The mortal struggle between dark meat and white meat.: Let me say at the outset, I don't ...http://slate.me/gL3hUw
White meat turkey has no taste. Its slabs of dry, fibrous material are more like cardboard conveyances, useful only for transporting flavorsome food like stuffing and gravy from plate to mouth. It's less a foodstuff than a turkey app, simulated meat, a hyperlink to real food.
But I am fascinated by how tastes get made and unmade, the intersection of culture, class and sensory responses. Not being a postmodernist I wouldn't call the overwhelming American preference for white-meat turkey a form of cultural hegemony. More like a mass hallucination. Why, for instance, hasn't white meat shared the same fate, the same cultural disenfranchisement, as packaged white bread?
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| "Why White Meat," asks Slate. Editor's note -- "Here are the enthusiastic words of a columnist in the New York Times of May 13, 1941" ... "The Hazards of Making Gravy" RT @TheOldFoodie Solving the gravy problem in 1941 http://tinyurl.com/2fewvfm Ready-to-Cook Gravy Latest Addition to Quick Aids for Harassed Housewife. Editor's note -- and a The Old Foodie "Quotation for the Day" ... "....grease is not gravy. How often I have wished, from the depths of a loathing stomach, that certain well-meaning housekeepers - at whose boards I have sat as guest or boarder - who fry beefsteak in lard, and send ham to table swimming in fat; upon the surface of whose soups float spheroids of oil that encase the spoon with blubber, and coat the lips and tongue of the eater with flaky scales-that these dear souls who believe in 'old-fashioned cookery,' understood this simple law of digestive gravity!" Breakfast, Luncheon and Tea, Marion Harland, (Mary Virginia Terhune) (1875) |
The Gazette wishes a Happy Thanksgiving to Nicole and Terry!
~8~
Our Turkey was ok...for a ordered one.
ReplyDeleteWould have rather had some good spare ribs though ;-)
Hope you had a good time!
Only if they're baby-back ribs. Regular spare ribs can be dry and fibrous.
ReplyDeleteAnd fun was had by all ... but no Turkey. Rock Cornish Game Hens with Orange sauce was our Thanks.
ReplyDeleteWe enjoyed both of our turkeys. Oh, and the stuffing too.
ReplyDeleteTwo turkeys? Then it was twice the enjoyment!
ReplyDeleteThe game hens were tasty - with rice and mushroom stuffing.
I like light and dark meat, if well cooked and moist. I wonder if this writer's mother just overcooked the turkey. Unfortunately parts of ours tasted like lighter fluid this year, owing to our oven being kaput and our grill being on the small side and Dr. Weirsdo not trying to order the turkey (well, we have a LOT of water glasses to fill!) till too late.
ReplyDeleteweirsdo
I may roast a turkey once or twice a year. The best way I've found to keep white meat moist (and flavorful) is by rubbing a herb-butter mix directly on the breast under its skin.
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