Dark turkey meat and the first Thanksgiving

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Chef Oz: Inside the CIA

Not that CIA, mind you. Longtime Waco chef Mike Osborne is in New York, where's he's enrolled in The Culinary Institute of America. He'll share tidbits of food lore, recipes galore, the inside scoop on couscous and general observations about life as he knows it.

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Thursday November 11, 2010

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Dark turkey meat and the first Thanksgiving

By Mike Osborne

I have often pondered what it is about the dark meat on a turkey carcass that evokes such a rabidly negative response from so many of the folks we feed at Thanksgiving. It's approaching rather rapidly I'm told. If the way many of us turn up our noses at the notion of dark meat is any indication, a holiday cook might as well be offering the esteemed guests the spoor of a bobcat. We have witnessed the evolution of the domesticated version of what could have been the national bird, if old Ben Franklin had his way, into the top-heavy butterball that sports enough self-basted white meat to satisfy the most persnickety relative or customer present at the holiday table. Perhaps the answer to the dark meat conundrum and other troubling questions about the origins of this perhaps not so uniquely American holiday can be found by drifting back in time to the very first Thanksgiving celebration on the North American shores.

Guess what...it wasn't the New England Pilgrims and their Native American next door neighbors. It seems the Catholic Spaniards down in Florida beat the thee and thou protestants to the thankfulness punch by a couple of decades. I have the feeling old Leif Erikson and his Norse fishing buddies might have grunted a word of thanks that they didn't have to eat salt cod any more once they waded ashore around the year 800 or so. They ate wild grapes and turkeys they caught in fishing nets and even they didn't like the dark meat. Loki Odinson was heard to remark that it did not taste like chicken and he threw a fit for sushi right before he was executed for being unthankful.

As a matter of fact, the tradition of holding a harvest feast featuring public spectacle thankfulness to the appropriate deity crosses lots of cultural lines and spans millennia. Egyptians did it--Ra Ra Ra. Hebrews did, too--it was Yaweh or the highway. Celts and Greeks and Visigoths and unknown agrarian tribes of Meso-America all celebrated the autumn harvest. They just didn't hold their shindigs on the last Thursday of November like we do.

So exactly how did Thanksgiving etch its way into America's psyche? And why so late in November? We have three of America's best presidents to thank for Thanksgiving. Good old George Washington lobbied hard to establish the holiday as a way of saying thanks to God for letting the revolution work out so well. It caught on in New England but Georgia and the Carolinas didn't get with the program.

As the first half of the 19th Century unfolded, there was this character named Sarah Hale who picked up the Thanksgiving mantle and ran a marathon with it. Folks back in those days said Sarah reminded them a lot of Paula Deen though she was too proper to say "y'all" more than twice a month. She was an early Martha Stewart role model for sure. Sarah wrote to congressmen begging for national holiday status, implored presidents, and was an ardent advocate of roasting turkeys, though she said she never cared much for the dark meat. Sarah Hale finally hit a home run with Abe Lincoln.

In the fall of 1863 the country was still in the bitter embrace of civil war. The Union had won a recent great victory at a place in Pennsylvania known as Gettysburg. That battle turned the tide in favor of the North but at a horrific cost. More Americans died during the three-day battle than we lost in Vietnam. Lincoln was looking for ways to unite and heal the wounds that had torn the United States to tatters. North and South, black and white, Union and Confederacy, a million or so war casualties--think we've got problems now? Sarah Hale convinced Lincoln that Thanksgiving, a national holiday that celebrated all that we have to be thankful for, was just what the doctor ordered, and the theme stuck.

FDR, who also didn't like dark meat, got himself on the wrong side of Thanksgiving in 1939 when he tried changing the date. November of 1939 was one of those freaky-deaky months that had five Thursdays, and the last Thursday was the last day of the month. Roosevelt thought his buddies in retail might benefit from an extra week of Christmas rush so he moved the holiday back to November 23rd. The calendar lobby and the college football lobby were both mightily perturbed, their Thanksgiving day games had been scheduled for months and the calendar guys would go broke reprinting at the last minute. So in a bold conciliatory move, President Roosevelt relented and gave Thanksgiving its permanent post.

Throughout its history Thanksgiving has had strong religious roots and ties. Thanksgiving? Thank who? Thank God. That's who. But now the holiday has a more secular bent and seems more like a family reunion that watches football together while stuffing themselves into a stupor. It's the time we start piling on those holiday pounds and ponder who will make the cut on the Christmas shopping list. Many of us are probably most thankful that we don't have to spend time with relatives we can't stand more than once or twice a year, though I don't count myself in that crowd.

Here's what I think the deal is on the dark meat phobia. If you dine on a wild turkey--one you went out in the woods and strangled by yourself-- the white meat is truly divine. The legs, however, have a very strong gamy taste and are barely suitable for the stock pot or cat food. I'm wondering if the bad rap dark meat has carried all these years stems from the days when the onliest turkeys we ate were the wild ones. Attitudes and prejudices get passed down just like recessive genes. Hey, it's just a theory.

This year at Thanksgiving I'm not going to have everybody at the table talk about what they're most thankful for. Instead I'm going to reflect on the holiday in a more historical context. I'll be thinking of how Abraham Lincoln established the day as a way to bind up the wounds of a divided nation. I'll be wondering if we can do that now. I'll be thinking how nice it is to forgive your brother for some deep buried childhood slight. I'll be recognizing what a wonderful thing it is to tell your parents and children how much you love them. I'll be reminded that a house divided cannot stand. I'll be hopeful for healing. And I won't have to say it, I'll just be--thankful.

5 Comments | Post a comment

Chef Oz

Nov. 22, 2010, 3:27PM

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Ain't it the truth, Ruan? Dark meat has much more flavor, juice, and fat than that old dry, stringy, white stuff. Another chicken (or turkey) part I'm partial towards is what's euphemistically known as the pope's nose, aka the tail. It's especially tasty on a nicely roasted bird when a good bit of the fat has cooked out, leaving behind (pun intended) a crunchy nugget of chickeny goodness. Lately I've been ripping the fat blobs out of the body cavity, chopping it up, and adding the fat to the roasting pan. When you make the pan sauce to go with the bird, it will be loaded with lots of delicious cracklin's. Try it. You'll dig it.

Ruan Pearson

Nov. 22, 2010, 9:54AM

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Missed your missives. I came to love dark meat late (very late) in life. I think it's really funny that dark meat is a big faux pas in chicken salad here in Waco. Apparently, Ladies-Who-Lunch do not appreciate it.

kyle

Nov. 21, 2010, 5:24PM

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I would love to spend a week in that little area. Keep up the good work. C U late Dec. Come across the street and have a glass of vin and catch up.

Chef Oz

Nov. 16, 2010, 7:30PM

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Howdy, Kyle. Good to know somebody's paying attention. Sorry it's been so long between posts. School has been very demanding, but I'm doing well. I had a ninja-stealth chef in the mediterranean kitchen who flogged me like a mean little monkey in a jockey suit riding a great dane. I was the dog in that scenario. I was trying to cook paella in a paper-thin pan over a recalcitrant burner instead of an open fire and things got a bit sticky...and burnt. I did lose about 6-pounds during that class--I ran from 5:30 in the morning until quitting time. The Wines class was a real challenge, too. We had some very cool guest speakers, though. I got to meet wine expert/author, Oz Clark. Don't meet that many Oz's these days. It's all still a major kick. I'm in Restaurant Row right now. I'm front of the house in St. Andrew's Cafe. It's the campus sustainable restaurant. Most menu items are sourced locally--that includes beer and wine, all dairy, artisinal cheeses, grass-fed beef, pastured chickens, Hudson Valley foie gras, and lots of other great stuff. The brussels sprouts we served today were harvested just outside the restaurant's front door. You'd love it. I'll be in NY for Thanksgiving but back in Waco over Christmas break. Keep reading. I really appreciate it.

Kyle

Nov. 15, 2010, 1:32PM

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Here's to dark meat. Many thanks and have a HAPPY THANKSGIVING. Good to hear from you, Finally!!!