"For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness...all mortal greatness is but disease." — Moby Dick

As holidays go, Thanksgiving should be perfect: An extra-long weekend! Wall-to-wall football! Discounted commerce! A multi-course feast where we are expected to eat until exhaustion!

But let’s talk turkey, which is unequivocally the very worst part of Thanksgiving.

We have been conditioned to believe that our Thanksgiving day should climax with the family sitting down at a shared table and feasting upon the perfectly roasted turkey, a semicircular hump of meat, moist and succulent inside, with a crisp skin burnished to the color of a basketball.

This is an unattainable myth. Every year in houses across America, some poor sucker gets stuck in the kitchen all day attempting to perform a Thanksgiving miracle that will not happen.

Take it from someone who has been on turkey duty the past 15 years: That ideal turkey does not exist, or at least is not approachable without a food stylist, Photoshop, and a rustic farmhouse kitchen table that wouldn’t look out of place in Bon Appétit.

Trying to get delicate flavor inside something as large as a turkey is like trying to infuse flavor into a car. Part of what makes turkey so challenging is you are basically asked to cook two vastly different types of meat. Turkey legs (dark) and breasts (white) cook at different rates, so getting them both done at the same time requires more hacks than Mr. Robot. Plus, your average home oven doesn’t cook at an even rate, so the skin often comes out mottled and spotted like a camo turkey, nothing like those perfect mahogany birds you see in photos. Slicing a turkey at the table will inevitably devolve into an awkward orgy of ground-up meat and skin, and God forbid someone requests dark meat, forcing you to attempt the elegant removal of a leg.


Cooking a turkey is such an impossible task that entire industries have spawned around it. Stores break out shelves of specialty equipment each season. Phone lines are manned throughout the holiday to provide instant help. Should I brine it? Do I stuff it? Maybe I cook it upside down? Can I use a rub? How often should I baste? Or, here’s a brilliant idea, what if we deep-fry our turkey? (This is not a brilliant idea.)

Perhaps we should consider the source: The turkey itself is a horrible bird. I once saw a wild turkey on a golf course in Florida, and, frankly, I’m still scarred. It seemed to be nearly as tall as I am, with bright clusters of feathers here and there, plus weird junk hanging from its face and neck. It was somehow prehistoric as well as futuristic, as though it had recently arrived from space. Standing there holding just a four iron, I knew for certain if this thing came after us, I would stand no chance, much like these poor folks. And as we all know, if you aren’t careful, given a chance a turkey will go right for the stuffing.

Still, each year I keep coming back, dumbly volunteering to tackle the bird. I’ve come perilously close, nailing parts of it but never getting it all correct at once. (And let’s just agree to overlook the brining fiasco of 2008.) Last year, I spent weeks reading up and investigating techniques before settling upon this method. Aesthetically, it was a triumph. Practically, by the time the thighs were cooked, the breast had become styrofoam. At this point, making a perfect turkey is my white whale. One day I shall prevail.

Until then, we are left to wonder. Maybe making a perfect turkey is supposed to tell a holiday story. It’s the tale of how the pilgrim settlers persevered through those early tough, lean winters in Massachusetts, before they gained the strength and knowledge to steal all the land from the Native Americans.


So let’s roast this jive turkey and look ahead to Christmas, when we’re allowed to cook whatever we want.

We love Thanksgiving. We endure the turkey.

Thanks for nothing.

An idea for your Thanksgiving leftovers: