Thanksgiving, as it is traditionally celebrated, is the most honest American holiday: only appetite, no apologies. Every other event on our civic calendar asks us to remember something noble, or mourn something tragic, or celebrate something grand or abstract, but Thanksgiving simply asks us to get hungry together and then eat. In any given year, this will be a very easy path to community; it may be the last truly unifying experience available to us as Americans. This year, as we gather for a feast at a time, in a place and in a country that seems to be actively working to become more cruel, more uncaring, more willing to make people suffer for the sin of poverty, disease, being born in the wrong skin, with the wrong parents, or on the wrong side of an arbitrary line, the absurdity of it all is magnified. We feed others, we feed ourselves, and what else? At least at the table we can control something: the menu, the rituals, whatever little fierce beliefs we hold about the holiday itself.
Despite its name, Thanksgiving to me is less about gratitude and more about faith. I've stopped believing in the history of the time, in the sanitized myths of happy colonists befriending happy Native Americans, and I don't want to wonder too deeply about what might be left of my belief in America as an ideal. But I believe in the less sublime fact of the dish itself: I believe that priority in selecting turkey legs should be given to children under six years of age, because they make stunning photographs, and that the bird's cook and its carver should claim their spoils—the crispiest bits of skin, the prettiest little pieces of breast and thigh—as they work, not as they serve the meat. I believe in offering only to guests one cocktail optionand that it must be tough and serial. I believe that you should always compliment either the cranberry sauce or the potatoes, that the correct number of pies is half the number of guests plus one, and that whoever does the dishes should get their plate ready first. I believe soup has no place on the Thanksgiving table, where its slow slurping dulls the dynamics of dinner and conversation; if it is to be served, it should be poured into tiny tea cups or strong glasses and drunk (no spoons!) as a standing snack. I think going around the table and listing the things we're grateful for is a terrible practice, inevitably competitive, and a pattern of bad game design: it unfairly disadvantages both the person assigned to go first, who can't beat anyone, and the person who goes last, since by then all the obvious big thanks have already been said.
Above all, I believe that all the Thanksgiving traditions—the menu, the gatherings, the whole realization of Norman Rockwell fantasy—are optional, and that, like any supposedly rigid structure, they provide fertile ground for clever riffs and willful rebellion. However, as part of a holiday gathering, I believe in the superiority of the turkey carcass. Just as the agonies and shortcomings of the meal itself are necessary steps to the glorious leftovers aheadfor me the bird is simply a necessary condition for its bones. For most home cooks, eating turkey once a year is a gastronomic absurdity, overly idealized, inevitably difficult to prepare. In fact, we shouldn't be cooking the Thanksgiving turkey at all, except for the fact that once it's in the spotlight, it becomes the turkey carcass, and that carcass is one of the greatest gifts of the entire blessed year, because once the meat is chopped and the pieces are assembled, you can throw it in a pot, cover it with water, put it on the stove, and make turkey broth. There are few things better in the world.
I already wrote before about my love for stocks, and every year my passion only intensifies. I love the practice of making it, the metaphor in its pragmatism: nothing is wasted, even the most gnawed bones have something to give. My favorite part is the broth itself: dark, rich, and sticky with collagen. The turkey meat is for the most part unforgettable, the chicken with just a touch more volume, but in the water its flavor transforms and deepens, creating something heady, a chest-thumping bravado. No recipe necessary: gather all the turkey leftovers into a large pot, throw in any leftover vegetables or herbs that look appealing, add cold water, and let the mixture simmer for as many hours as you like. As the skeleton softens and yields, the kitchen is filled with the warm, meaty aroma for the second time that day, but the nervousness that accompanied the previous roast is gone. This time there is no chaos, no clocks, no spreadsheets to anxiously monitor. By the time the stock is ready – in two, four or six hours; in fact you can leave it on forever, just skim off the foam and add water if the level seems low – leftovers from previous meals are stored separately. Perhaps all the guests have left; Someone else, hopefully, has been assigned to wash the dirty dishes. Simmering turkey broth after Thanksgiving is a meditation, a cleansing, a gentle restoration of the home.
We're a small, slightly unhinged fraternity dedicated to turkey's glorious second life in soup form. I count among my brothers Michael Dukakis, the former governor of Massachusetts and former presidential candidate whose zeal was so great that he begged for bones off Thanksgiving tables from family and friends, and eventually the public at large. “Michael Dukakis would love your turkey carcass,” said the Boston journalist. Globe wrote in 2015. (Five years later, after a huge response, the city's public radio station provided an update: “Mike Dukakis no longer accepts turkey carcasses.”) I was always tempted to follow his lead, perhaps by writing a note in the elevator of my apartment building saying that if anyone had turkey bones that they wouldn’t use, I’d be happy to come by and pick them up. This year I think I'll finally do it. The carcass of a neighbor's bird, robbed and rescued from the quiet shame of trash, is something to be grateful for. I believe in this too: at the end of one holiday lies the beginning of the next. ♦
