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Carving a turkey

It’s the big day and some of you out there are going to be carving a turkey, maybe even for the very first time. It can be a daunting task but the right technique can make all the difference.

The New York Times put together a great video a few years ago about how to carve your turkey like a butcher, you should probably watch it a few times. Forget the cheesy Norman Rockwell paintings of some WASP-y patriarch carving the bird at the table, this is the way it should be done.

The best part of this carving method is that it cuts the breast across the grain of the meat, which helps to make it more tender. As any fellow Harold McGee devotee will tell you, what we carnivores know as meat are the animal’s muscles, which are elongated fibers bundled together – you can see them as the “grain” of the meat. Those fibers work by contracting and relaxing (think about how your bicep works) which makes them surprisingly resilient lengthwise, especially to chewing. Separating groups of fibers is easier than breaking them apart, so cut your meat across the grain in order to chew it with the grain[1].

Regardless of how you choose to cut whatever you decide to eat for dinner, I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving.

[1] I totally stole that line from McGee’s On Food and Cooking p. 129. You really should own this book if you’re interested in what actually happens when you cook food. I could read the egg chapter a hundred times and still learn something new.

First off, the author creates a main character which is an empty shell. Her appearance isn’t described in detail; that way, any female can slip into it and easily fantasize about being this person.

First off, the author creates a main character which is an empty shell. Her appearance isn’t described in detail; that way, any female can slip into it and easily fantasize about being this person.

—

The Oatmeal describes how Twilight works.

Just because it’s easy comedy doesn’t make it less funny.