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Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save The tradition of sitting around the dining room table with family and friends having that big turkey dinner for Thanksgiving is one many of us share. It's a Norman Rockwell experience. But is it fact or fantasy? Turkey may not be the favorite choice for everyone at the table.
In fact, some 35% of Americans say they'd rather have something else, according to a survey by The Vacationer, a media site focused on food and travel. It shouldn't be surprising. While the smell of a roasting turkey in the oven can be a warm and comforting experience, cooking a turkey is a big job with lots of pitfalls.
It takes up a lot of space in the fridge prior to the holiday, it takes hours to cook the bird, and there's a good possibility that the little pop-up timer is not accurate, holding up dinner or leaving you with a dry, pithy meal. Prime rib, slow-roasted for hours and hand-carved to order, is a popular non-turkey choice for Thanksgiving at the Tuckahoe Inn. Fortunately, there are a plethora of options to turkey that also are very popular and delicious.
Some of the most popular poultry alternatives include rich and fatty duck or roasted chicken, according to a national poll by CNET. Both alternatives pair seamlessly with traditional Thanksgiving sides. They also found people would rather serve beef rather than turkey, with cuts ranging from prime rib to tenderloin, brisket or even pot roast.
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It's just so traditional that people just love it.” Roast beef is a popular entree, second to turkey, at the Smithville Inn. The restaurant expects to serve about 150 pounds of beef on its holiday buffet.
“Making it is always a nightmare at home,” he admits, but with seven industrial size ovens, that's not a problem for him. “Turkey is still the number one seller, by far. We offer it on our menu every day here.
It's such a popular dish down here. It's old school but people love it. Don't try and reinvent the wheel.
” Chef Phil Gormley, of the equally popular Smithville Inn in Galloway Township agrees. “I would say turkey is still the most popular. Absolutely.
” He says the amount of turkey served on Thanksgiving is double the amount of anything else they serve. And they serve a lot of other options. It's actually quite massive.
“We do a buffet and it is quite large,” he explains. “We do everything we've ever done here and we put it out on the buffet.” And despite the many options, he says they go though about 20 to 25 whole turkeys plus about 15 turkey breasts.
Altogether, about 300 pounds of turkey will be served to over 1,000 guests they usually serve on Thanksgiving Day. That's a lot of bird, but there are lots of people that go for something different. For them they also sell about 150 pounds of beef, the second most popular item at Smithville, followed by six to eight whole Virginia baked hams that are seasoned with cloves, orange-blossom honey and roasted.
Phil Gormley, executive chef at the Smithville Inn in Galloway Township, prepares corn chowder which will be offered on the restaurant's Thanksgiving buffet. Since we are down the shore, one would think seafood would rank high on the list of turkey alternatives. And that is so true at the Tuckahoe Inn.
“Our broiled seafood platter is the second most popular,” Merryman says after consulting last year's numbers. “It's a seafood combination with lobster tail, crab imperial, stuffed flounder, shrimp and scallops. It sells more than the prime rib.
But its real close.” That prime rib is very slow roasted, patted down with a dry rub of salt and pepper, herbs and spices, roasted for hours so it comes out a nice medium rare all the way through, And it's hand-carved to order. Merryman believes one of the other reasons people shy away from turkey, at least when they're eating out, is the bigger dining picture of the holiday.
Prime rib is the third most popular Thanksgiving entree choice at the Tuckahoe Inn. The prime rib is very slow roasted so it comes out a nice medium rare all the way through. “Not only are they having Thanksgiving dinner here, then they're going to their parents, then they're going to their cousin's house, then they have leftovers sent over to them from somebody else.
They get so turkeyed out that they decide they want to have beef. And some people really just like it better.” For those who are not meat eaters, the Tuckahoe offers a vegetarian platter with a twist.
“We offer a vegetarian dish and we try to make it as interesting as we can. Some years we're much better at that than others. One year we had grilled vegetables Napoleon which looked beautiful but it just didn't have a hook.
We backed it up with a wild mushroom risotto cooked with almond milk and vegan cheese and that sold fairly decent for vegetarians.” Pumpkin ravioli is one of the meatless items served on Thanksgiving at the Tuckahoe Inn in Beasley’s Point. The Napoleon style of serving veggies is a showstopper in it's presentation; a chargrilled tower of vegetables like eggplant, zucchini, bell peppers, portobello mushrooms and others that is a visually stunning and flavorful dish often served surrounded by aromatic basil pesto.
Interesting, after the coffee is served, the pumpkin pie nibbled at and we've loosened our belt after all that food, what's the least eaten item left on the Thanksgiving table? The most disliked Thanksgiving food goes to cranberry sauce with 30.51% of American adults saying they could do without it year in and year out, according to the aforementioned survey. It's a surprising finding, one that many of us find hard to believe.
“If my wife walks in and doesn't get cranberry sauce, my life is over,” jokes Chef Merryman. “I'm sleeping in the garage for a week.” “I remember growing up we would always have cranberry sauce on the table, but times have changed,” adds Chef Gormley.
“I find that everybody puts it on their plate. I don't know if they eat it or not.” Pumpkin ravioli in a sage butter sauce is topped with squash and zucchini “zoodles” at the Tuckahoe Inn.
Although it's difficult to pinpoint which items are passed over the most, he would probably say salads. The Smithville offers salads on its buffet, from dinner salads to compound salads like the bean and roasted tomato salad, the tomato mozzarella salad, or a Brussel sprout salad with bacon. But shying away from salad may be because people don't want to fill up when there are so many other choices, like prime rib, to choose.
“People are smart and they can see the value. As soon as they get a whiff of that, they know.” If you're going to commit to turkey, Gormley offers some suggestions to avoid the dryness.
He recommends brining the bird. “I like brining it because it's juicy, and it seems to be more tender because it will take in the flavors," he says. "This time of year I'll do an apple-cider brine.
Apple cider, apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, rosemary, thyme, oranges, a little bit of garlic, peppercorns and a good amount of salt, in fact, a couple cups per batch," Gormley says. "It really imparts the flavor, the sweetness, and the moisture which you desperately need in a turkey. He suggests putting the turkey breast side down in the brine for 12 hours and turning it over for 12 hours.
Rinse it off and put it in the oven. Broiled seafood is a non-turkey alternative offered for Thanksgiving at the Tuckahoe Inn. But if you're in the mood to try something new this year and decide to take a pass on the gobbler, Merryman says look to the sea.
“Seafood is always great. If you can find a nice striper, or something like that, I would cut little slits in the filets and place shaved garlic into those slits, then wrap the whole thing and bake it with seasoning, garlic, cracked black pepper, so you have some flavor in there,” he says. If you're curious what the chefs eat on Thanksgiving, it's not turkey.
They both admit they're so busy on Thanksgiving they really don't have time for a real meal at all. Merryman says they'll have a station in their kitchen with tuna fish salad, sandwiches, brisket and even candy to grab during the busy holiday. Pretty much the same at Smithville.
The pitfalls of restaurant life. Merryman recalls when his daughter was in college she was asked by a friend if she would be having Thanksgiving dinner at her home. Her reply, he related: “I have never had Thanksgiving dinner in my house.
Since I've been born my family is at the restaurant every Thanksgiving. But I'll have turkey the next day.” Satisfy your cravings With our weekly newsletter packed with the latest in everything food.
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