Part of a Thanksgiving series celebrating (and eating) the bird — all of it — from head to feet.
Plucking isn’t nearly as simple as it sounds. As a result, farmers, hunters, and processors through the ages have come up with tricks to reduce the effort. A butcher that I spoke with recently recommended dipping the turkey in scalding hot water until the tail feathers loosen, but not so long that the bird cooks. My mother remembers that trick from her early childhood on a turkey range. Her mother would lean the bird against a tree stump and chop off the head. The turkey would then run around the yard after the slaughter, legs, body, and neck. My grandmother would grab it, dunk it in boiling water, and pull out the feathers. It’s easiest to pluck close to the slaughter.
There are now high-tech de-featherers such as the EZPlucker, which drops the bird into a machine with a large metal bin with rubber nubs and rolls it around like agitated laundry until shaken nude. Using poultry wax is popular, too. You dip your birds in hot wax, then peel off the feathers like a lady would hair from her legs. Both the farmers from Violet Hill (which supplied my bird) and offal expert chef Chris Cosentino (Incanto, San Francisco) said I should wax the bird. But, like most people, I did not have access to a large vat or an outdoor burner, so Cosentino suggested dish soap. Dish soap contains paraffin wax, he explained, so in theory, you find a brand with wax at the top of the ingredient list, make a hot soapy bath, dip the bird, and quickly transfer it to another tub of ice water. This coats the feathers and makes plucking easier.
With a New York apartment, I wanted as little fuss as possible. All the dipping and wet feathers, and the thought of a dead bird in my bathtub, felt somewhat unsavory. Paul, one of the farmers at Violet Hill, said it would take fifteen minutes to do a “dry pluck.” So twenty-four hours post-slaughter, with wishful thinking and a good deal of ignorance, I opted for a dry pluck. Three hours in, I had ripped the skin in two places and was still picking away at the little hair-like feathers. I didn’t manage to remove the long wing and tail feathers, even with pliers, because the quills were lodged at least an inch into the skin. Ultimately, I filled the bathtub with scalding water and dipped the wings to loosen the more ornery feathers.
If I were to de-feather a bird again, I would go to a manicure-pedicure shop and invest twenty-five dollars in one of those paraffin-wax-bath-and-nail-spa kits, and use a wax heater to dip the turkey in sections. The wax would likely be more thorough, but also much, much easier.
COMING SOON: Whole Turkey Recipes (and Feet…)
THANKSGIVING 2012: Hacks, Recipes, and Wisdom on Eat Like a Man >>
