Stop Saying Turkey is Too Bland

Preparing food to be hotter, by which I mean spicier rather than having a higher temperature, does not necessarily make it better. Contemporary American culture holds traditional Anglo-Irish cuisine in contempt because it lacks the key ingredient of chili pepper. This unreasonable rejection of non-spicy foods seems to particularly rear its ugly head around the Thanksgiving through Christmas holidays when millions of turkeys are roasted for traditional feasting. Turkey and other traditional savory dishes like mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, dressing, and macaroni and cheese are lampooned and criticized as bland and boring vestiges of the past. This is nonsense. These dishes can be appreciated for their own qualities and it is wrong to consider them less interesting or somehow out of date because they are not hot enough.

Why are people rejecting traditional holiday dishes? Remember the old saying, “familiarity breeds contempt?” It is human nature to become excited by new ideas, new inventions, and new foods. But it’s also important to recognize the difference between the subjective value of experience that comes from freshness and newness, and intrinsic value. The idea that spicy heat is intrinsically better than other flavor profiles fits into the temporary, fashionable category. Spicy food is not intrinsically superior; it is merely (relatively) new to English speaking society. That is not to say the hotter is not as good as traditional savory cuisine, but to say that it is not better. The increasing popularity of spicy food is a long term trend in American cuisine, related to globalization, immigration, and the internal migration of people within the United States, but not one that I believe is permanent. Americans have become accustomed to adopting new practices brought in from outside and there is a certain cachet to declaring the new to be superior to the old. Sometimes the new is better, but in the realm of cuisine I do not accept that newer is always better. Twinkies were new at one point in time, Q.E.D.

How about another counterpoint? I invoke outside opinion. The French arguably have the greatest, most refined cuisine in the world. They even have a special term for eating as a hobby (and art): gastronomie (English: gastronomy), the sport of eating and appreciating food. Guess what? Traditional French cuisine is never spicy. It may be savory, rich, tangy, sour, or sweet, and sometimes includes modest amounts of pepper (usually black or white pepper), but is never spicy in the sense of hot wings or Thai cuisine.

Americans who love devilishly hot wings, hot Mexican food, hot Thai food, and hot this, hot that, and hot the other thing, will refer to something like roasted turkey, or potatoes as “bland.” I prefer to describe those foods as having “subtle” or “mild” flavors. If they are prepared correctly then they are still very flavorful in the savory sense. It’s part of the experience of eating to enjoy these flavor profiles for their own qualities just as much as spicy flavors. That is not to say that turkey and potatoes are not improved by additional ingredients that might include hot spices, it’s just that I do not accept that making something spicier is necessarily better than creating an amalgam of subtle flavors through careful preparation using ingredients that are not strongly flavored, such as butter, oil, salt, or milder spices such like cilantro and rosemary.

And yes, I eat hot wings, and I stock hot sauce in my own fridge and use it frequently, particularly with beans, tacos, pizza, and cuts of meat (yes, I’ve even tried it on turkey). I’m not against the chili pepper. I’m just in favor of appreciating everything from mild to hot, savory to sweet, tart to rich, and almost anything else you can think of. Don’t throw out the traditional roasted turkey just because it’s not fashionably spicy. If you think it’s bland, then I respectfully suggest that you are not preparing the turkey right.