A badly burnt bird, but great giblet gravy

One of the best things about Thanksgiving dinner is the leftovers. But since I’m traveling to Texas for my feast, I sadly won’t have pounds of turkey calling on my culinary creativity the days after Thanksgiving. Enter a turkey sale at Whole Foods last weekend. There, nestled amongst the mega-birds, was one little 10-pound free-range, vegetable-fed, never-been-frozen turkey, and I impulsively decided to buy it and roast it so I’d have enough for my own leftovers in New York City. How hard could it be? While I’d only roasted a turkey once before many years ago, with questionable results no less, these days I’m now much more capable in the kitchen. Besides, I roast chickens all the time and a turkey couldn't be that different. I was clearly deluded.

After scouring my neighborhood’s cooking shops for a roasting pan, I found a decent one on sale at Macy’s that was part of the new Martha Stewart line of cookware. It wasn’t coated in any nonstick nonsense, and was sturdy and attractive to boot. I was on my way! Now I just needed a method. But instead of calling the turkey pros in my family, I opted to (foolishly) figure it out on my own.

I read about 30 recipes on the proper way to roast the bird, and that’s where I got into trouble. Applying just about every technique I could find—brining, breast-side down, breast-side up, no basting, coating the skin in a chile puree and continuous cooking at a very high temperature—I was left with an over-done bird with meat as tender as sun-baked leather. Sure, some of the meat was edible, but if you decide to leave a tiny turkey in the oven at 400 degrees for 4 hours, don’t expect it to be juicy and succulent.

But one bright spot in my ill-conceived turkey adventure was the giblets. What many consider optional offal, (I was shocked at how many recipes said in reference to these innards, "Discard") is the highlight of my dad’s Thanksgiving. For generations, he and his family have been making some of the finest tasting gravy out of these ugly bits, a concoction so savory and rich that no vehicle is even necessary—you can eat this with a spoon.

There are countless giblet gravy recipes out there, but I find that my dad’s is the best as it’s simple to make yet sophisticated in taste. He’s tweaked his mother’s recipe a bit, as Grandma is known to also always include hard-boiled eggs in hers, which can be a bit much. You don’t often see giblet gravy in the Northeast, as its provenance hails from a time when poor Southerners wanted to extract every last ounce of goodness from their birds. But if you enjoy the earthy, creamy flavors of chopped liver, paté or fois gras, you’ll also enjoy giblet gravy.
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