If you don’t know what a Thompson Turkey is (or the infamous Black Turkey), I recommend you read Jeffrey Steingarten’s essay from The Man Who Ate Everything – he tells the story, history, and his exploits in making it far better than I will. But the basics are this: This is a completely bug-nuts, bonkers, insane thing to do. To top off the overflowing science beaker of crazy I have going on here, my husband is out of town, so I’m pretty much roasting myself a 15 lb. bird for no other reason than that it’s there. The stuffing alone has over 30 ingredients, and I don’t even really like stuffing that much. I am the bear that went over the mountain.
Blame it on the butcher. I wanted a turkey breast, and they were on sale for $.99 a pound! Good stuff too – not injected with salt water, plumped, or otherwise “enhanced”. BUT they were out. My friendly neighborhood butcher points to the freezer case where whole turkeys are an amazing $.49 a pound. I can’t resist. I should, but I can’t. Eight dollars later I carry my prize out cradled in my arms. And now here I am.
Everything about this recipe is wrong, wrong, wrong. You stuff the bird with a bajillion wacky things, cook it for far too long at way too high a heat level (one instruction in this recipe is to disable your smoke alarm. Really.), and paint it with a weird paste every fifteen minutes. For five hours. It will burn black as night on the outside, turning into a crunchy Pompeii-ish nightmare. But allegedly once you crack through the shell, fountains of juice will spurt up to the roof, revealing the most tender, most flavorful, succulent turkey you’ve ever tasted.
I think I’ll try it! Stay tuned.
illdothedisheslater 