TURKEY TALK

WHAT TO HAVE FOR THANKSGIVING:
FRESH OR FROZEN?
WILD, ORGANIC, FREE RANGE OR CONVENTIONAL?

This article first appeared in my "Tastes" column in the Wine Spectator.

When I was food editor of the San Jose Mercury News, a reader called me one afternoon in November in a panic about how to cook her holiday  turkey. "Relax, a turkey is just a big chicken." I said. "But I don’t know how to cook a chicken, either!" she replied.

Even people who can cook a turkey are often in a quandary about what kind they should buy for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Organic? Free-range? Wild? Fresh? Or is a standard frozen supermarket turkey perfectly fine? The answer depends on your taste and your pocketbook.

Fresh vs. Frozen. According to Rick Rodgers, author of Thanksgiving 101, there’s no contest between the two. "Fresh is always better. Frozen poultry is drier, which is why many are injected with that chicken soup solution," he says, referring to the liquid put into the breast to keep it moist.

Fred Jaindl, president of Jaindl Family Farms in Orefield, Pennsylvania, which processes 20,000 turkeys a day in the fall, also prefers fresh. "Turkeys need a little age, about three days between 35 to 38 degrees, to make them tender. Most places that sell frozen turkeys freeze them right away," he says. Jaindl’s frozen turkeys, which represent only 15 percent of the company’s sales, are not aged, and, sure enough, my frozen, unaged Jaindl bird was on the tough side.

While she’d probably take a fresh over frozen if given the choice, Pam Anderson, author of The Perfect Recipe, isn’t adamant about it. That’s because she almost always puts her turkey in a brine solution--2 cups kosher salt to 2 gallons of water--for 24 hours before roasting. "Brining is the great equalizer," she says. "It cleanses the bird and makes it juicier and more flavorful."

To test this theory, I cooked two 12-pound frozen Swift’s Butterball turkeys, one brined and the other not. The unbrined bird was disappointing. The meat fell apart when I carved it, as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. The breast was dried out, despite the fact that it had been treated with that soup solution. The meat of the brined turkey had much more integrity. It held up better to slicing and was much moister.

Whether you brine or not, how you defrost a frozen turkey is critical. It needs 24 hours in the refrigerator for every 5 pounds. Once defrosted (and brined, if you’re doing that), an additional 24 hours of refrigeration (unwrapped) will dry out the bird just enough to give you a crisper skin when you roast it.

Organic free-range vs. conventional. Organic turkeys are fed with grains grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers. Free-range birds are allowed to roam outside the coop. I tested one that was both organic and free-range, from Eberly Poultry in Stevens, Pennsylvania, against a fresh non-organic, non-free range turkey from Little Washington Farm, a small producer in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. All six people at my table correctly guessed which one was the Eberly turkey, by virtue of its richer taste. Yet half preferred the milder, yet still flavorful, turkey from Little Washington. I liked the Eberly bird best.

The lesson here seems to be that organic, free-range turkey has a richer flavor and thus provides a better match than the conventional kind for hearty red wines. However, you can still impress your guests with a fresh, local turkey like the one from Little Washington, which I found significantly better in every respect than the Butterballs. It was much less expensive than the organic bird, too. The 13-pound Eberly was $51.35, versus just $18.12 for a Little Washington turkey of roughly the same size.

Wild Turkey. Speaking of cost, the 14-pound wild turkey I bought from Toubl Game Bird Farms in Beloit, Wisconsin cost $62.33, not including shipping, which can be half as much as the turkey itself. The Toubl (rhymes with "gobble") was the richest of all the turkeys I tried. It had a slightly gamy undertone comparable to domesticated game birds like squab. (The Toubl birds are a wild species, though they are penned for most of their lives and are not raised organically.) All my dinner companions loved it, even though the dark meat was a bit chewy. I especially liked the firm, juicy quality of the breast meat. It was easy to slice when hot, and when cold the next day. However, there wasn’t much of it. Unlike the domesticated Dolly Partons, wild turkeys have sunken breasts, which enables them to fly.

When asked (as he often is) if a female hen is better than a male tom turkey, Fred Jaindl says "You can’t tell the difference if they’re raised the same way." Actually, larger toms are often cut up for commercial use, whereas smaller hens are sold whole. Both Jaindl and Rodgers feel that an 18-22 pounds is an ideal size. Anderson prefers to go smallerat just 12-14 pounds, she says, a turkey will cook more evenly, stay juicier, and be easier to handle. If you want more meat than that, she advises, "cook two."

There are as many ways to cook turkey as there are stuffing recipes. For a small to medium-sized bird, try this simple method, which I used for most of the turkeys I tested (each was 12-14 pounds) Each breast was smeared with butter, loosely covered with an aluminum foil tent, and roasted breast-side-up for 1 ¼ to 1 1/2 hours at 350 degrees. To brown the skin, I then removed the foil and continued for another hour at 400 degrees, until the internal temperature (taken from the thickest part of the thigh with an instant read thermometer, not a meat thermometer) reached about 170 degrees.

Because Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday, I generally serve only American wines. Though reds are called for because of turkey’s game-like quality (even with domesticated birds), I found a fat, oaky Chardonnay surprisingly good. Even better was crisp and fruity Pinot Noir. All-American Zinfandel is a natural choice but only if the alcohol levels are in check. Blockbusters will overwhelm any bird. The biggest problem with wine, however, is not the turkey but the sweet side dishes like cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes. They can cause just as much of a headache as finding the right bird, which is why my phone will be off the hook this Thanksgiving.

How to Get It

• D’Artagnan, Newark, NJ, 800-327-8246; www.dartagnan.com (for organic, free-range Eberlys, and wild)

• Jaindl, Orefield, Pa (610) 395-3333 (for retail stores that carry and hours of the company store)
• Toubl Game Bird Farms, Beloit, WI, 800-875-0603; birdgirl@inwave.com
• Urbani USA, Long Island City, NY, Culver City, CA. 800-281-2330; www.urbani.com (free-range and wild)
• L. Halteman Family store in the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, 215-925-3206 (for Little Washington Farm turkeys)