Off topic -- turkey discussion (from Los Angeles Times).
THANKSGIVING PREPARATION GUIDE
In Search of the Great Turkey
By JENNIFER LOWE, Deputy Food Editor
FROM THE TIMES ARCHIVES -- Fresh or frozen?
Free-range or organic? Basted or not? There are
enough debates at the Thanksgiving table without
throwing the turkey into it.
So, while barbecues were firing up for summer, the
Times Test Kitchen started testing turkeys. Fresh
turkeys. Frozen turkeys. Free-range and organic
turkeys. Supermarket brands, national brands, small
specialty brands. In all, we roasted more than 20 birds
over four months, each time using the same basic
recipe.
What makes a good turkey? It depends.
For instance, our fresh Willie Bird--a premium
mail-order turkey from a small grower in
Sonoma--perplexed many tasters; its meat had a more
fibrous texture and a wild, gamy taste. The flavor was
unfamiliar to those who grew up eating plain,
unexciting turkey meat. But three or four of the more
refined palates among us said this was a pretty good
bird.
On the other hand, a frozen Butterball--pleasant but
unremarkable--had its fans too. Those tasters liked it
because it was familiar.
The basic consideration for most of us is fresh versus
frozen. What we found was not surprising at first. In
side-by-side blind taste comparisons of turkeys in the
12- to 14-pound range, fresh turkeys usually were
preferred by the majority of our tasters. As they
nibbled dark and light meat, tasters said they liked the
moistness of the fresh birds.
"This tastes like your grandmother's house in the
country," one taster said, striving for the right metaphor to explain the fresh-turkey
taste.
Another fresh bird that drew thumbs-up was described as so fresh "it must have
flown in by itself."
In comparison, tasters wrinkled their noses at most of the frozen turkeys, calling
their meat "sawdusty," "crumbly" and "chewy and stringy."
But then a funny thing happened. One frozen bird was chosen over a fresh. A few
weeks later, it happened again. "Succulent." "Lots of turkey flavor." "I think this
one's going to be a sandwich," our tasters said.
Our final favorites, prepared and sampled for a second tasting, challenged some of
our existing notions about turkeys. Of the three turkeys we liked best, one was
fresh, one was frozen and one belonged to the nebulous new category that's neither
fresh nor frozen but somewhere in between: a fresh Empire Kosher, a frozen
Shelton's and a "refrigerated" Norbest.
About 40% of the turkeys consumed this holiday will be fresh, according to figures
from the National Turkey Federation, an industry trade group. The federation
expects that number to rise in coming years; time-pressed consumers prefer the
convenience of fresh turkeys. A frozen turkey needs days to thaw, eating up
refrigerator space, while a fresh turkey is ready to go in the roasting pan as soon as
it's brought home.
Besides, say some producers and other experts, freezing can result in a dry turkey.
That's because when turkeys are frozen, the cell structure of the meat can be
disrupted, allowing the moisture to leak out when the bird is defrosted.
But if turkeys are frozen immediately after processing--"flash-frozen" in blast
freezers where temperatures are about 30 degrees below zero and wind speed of 60
mph is created--and then carefully defrosted, meat cells can be kept from breaking
down, manufacturers say.
To counter dryness, manufacturers inject or "baste" turkeys with a liquid solution
equal to between 3% and 12% of a turkey's weight. Labels must list the percentage
of solution and the ingredients--often turkey broth, water, a fat such as vegetable
oil, spices and salt.
A number of the turkeys tasted by The Times were salty right off the bat, and
sometimes the salt seemed unevenly distributed in a turkey. A bite of white meat
from the center of the breast, for example, might have been much saltier than a
chunk of dark meat from the leg. Some tasters found the salt overbearing or
thought it gave a more "processed" taste, and others thought the salt improved the
flavor. It turns out that in most cases, those birds were frozen; few fresh turkeys
are basted.
In a couple of instances, the saltiness masked an underlying flavor that was
described as "gamy" or "fishy." It was difficult to tell whether the turkey had been
lying around a freezer case for a while, which could have caused a slight off-taste.
(Manufacturers say that for the holidays, frozen turkeys are shipped to retailers at
most a few months before November, while fresh turkeys are shipped no more
than a week or two before Thanksgiving.)
"A lot of manufacturers inject their [frozen] turkeys to enhance the turkey and end
up with moisture to maintain that flavor profile," says Janice Price, vice president of
marketing for Empire Kosher Poultry Inc., which two months ago decided to start
injecting its frozen turkeys with a 3% turkey broth and salt solution.
Because its turkeys must meet strict kosher requirements, Empire's frozen and
fresh turkeys are salted, then soaked in cold water, rather than processed in hot
water, the method used by other processors. The salt, Price says, acts as a
tenderizer as well as maintaining a turkey's juices. Occasionally Empire receives
complaints of an overly salty turkey, but the two prepared in the Times kitchen
were not noticeably salty.
Rather, another turkey in the final tasting--the Norbest--was pegged for its
saltiness, but that seemed to add to its popularity. Norbest Inc., a Utah-based
cooperative of turkey growers that produces fresh, frozen and refrigerated turkeys,
bastes its birds with a 5% solution of broth, salt and "natural flavors" all over--"legs,
thighs, drumsticks, all parts of the breast and wings," says Paul Reed, director of
marketing. Some producers baste turkeys only in a few spots, Reed says, usually
the breast meat.
The Norbest turkey was the only one in our tasting that is part of a new and fairly
obscure category of turkeys that as yet has no official name. In a ruling last year,
the U.S. Department of Agriculture said turkeys could be labeled "fresh" only if
stored at 26 degrees or above, and turkeys stored at 0 degrees or below must be
labeled "frozen." But in between is the odd category of not quite fresh or
frozen--turkeys stored between 1 and 25 degrees--which Norbest calls
"refrigerated."
The California Poultry Industry Federation had campaigned for some sort of ruling
to prohibit producers from using words like "never frozen" on turkeys that were
clearly colder and thawing.
The percentage of these mid-range birds on the market is small, says Bill Mattos,
president of the poultry group.
Whether it was because the store where we purchased our Norbest had put it in the
freezer, or whether it was at the low end of the 1- to 25-degree range, ours was
pretty hard and did need some thawing.
The third turkey that did well in our tasting, from Shelton's Poultry Inc., a small
producer in Pomona, brought another characteristic to the table: It was a frozen
"free-range" bird.
"Most commercial turkeys are raised in barns--they live in houses their entire lives,"
says Gary Flanagan, president of Shelton's. "We move ours to a range pen. . . .
They have plenty of feed and water, and we think they're just healthier."
A free-range bird is one that has access to the outdoors. Some free-range turkeys
also are free of antibiotics, used to promote growth, but not all. And, according to
government regulations, no hormones can be given to any poultry.
Shelton's is one of only a few producers that raise organic turkeys, which eat only
costly organically grown feed. Organic turkeys are among the priciest for
consumers; prices run about $3 per pound and higher, compared to $2 to $3 per
pound for other fresh turkeys.
Our tasters thought the Shelton's "had a good turkey flavor," but no one identified a
taste that might have indicated this was a free-range bird.
Often those who buy specially labeled poultry--whether free-range or organic--do
so for other reasons. "There is an emotional attachment to the idea of free-range,"
says Sarah G. Birkhold, an assistant professor in the poultry science department at
Texas A&M University.
Birkhold has found only one thing that affects the taste of a turkey before it reaches
the oven, and that's whether it has been injected with a baste. Though the baste
may make a turkey more moist, it also imparts a perception of moisture, she says.
"A small amount of oil or fat will enhance salivation; the turkey will seem juicier [as
one eats]."
Likewise, people assume that dark meat is more moist, she says, but it really has
only about 1% more moisture than white meat. Indeed, tasters in the Test Kitchen
often described a turkey's dark meat as juicy and its white meat as dry. The
difference, again, is one of perception, Birkhold says; dark meat has more fat,
which makes it juicier, though not necessarily more moist.
"Flavor is a combination of taste, aroma, texture, mouth-feel--it all works together,"
she says.
Other questions were raised during our tastings: Does a turkey's age affect taste?
Its size? Whether it's a hen or a tom?
Not all turkey labels list the bird as hen or tom, but manufacturers use size as a rule
of thumb: Hens generally are smaller, typically not much larger than 12 pounds;
hens also are slaughtered younger, typically between 14 and 16 weeks old. (Toms
usually are processed at 18 to 20 weeks.) Most manufacturers say that younger
turkeys are more tender, but the only clue a consumer may have to a turkey's age at
processing is whether the label says "young," as in "young tom."
As for that fishy taste, we can't be sure, but we may have had a turkey that had
suffered freezer burn or dehydration. A turkey can be frozen up to a year,
according to the National Turkey Federation, though companies such as Butterball
recommend freezing for no more than six to seven months for peak freshness.
It could have been, too, that one of our tasters had an extremely sensitive palate and
actually was detecting creatine, a substance present in muscle tissue that could lend
a slight bitter taste, Birkhold says.
But there's no debate about this: A slathering of gravy will hide most anything.
Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times |
