After a week that included a Tuesday experimental steam oven spatchcocked turkey experiment (mostly failed), a Thursday steam oven intact organic turkey dinner (slightly overcooked), and turkey leftovers for the rest of the meals, we took the kids to a safe turkey-free environment: dim sum. It then occurred to me that I have never seen turkey on a Chinese restaurant menu in the U.S. (or in China, for that matter, but mostly I cannot read menus in China!).
Big question for the night: Why not?
It is plainly possible to raise turkeys outside of the U.S. Turkey shwarma is popular in Israel, for example (taste-off). But even if the Chinese don’t want to cook turkey in China, why wouldn’t a Chinese restaurant in the U.S. add turkey to the menu? Is it possible that turkey is simply bad?
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/11/chinese-red-sauce-glazed-turkey-thanksgiving-recipe.html
Turkey is simply bad, by revealed preference.
Other than at Thanksgiving and the occasional sandwich at Panera, when do you ever choose to eat turkey?
“Is it possible that turkey is simply bad?”
You’ve been on this planet _how_ long, and you’re just figuring this out?
[[shakes head sadly]]
People want Chinese food to be tasty.
Chinese restaurants want to sell people tasty Chinese food.
Can turkey be made to taste good?
Aunt Marie from San Francisco has the answer:
@Jin @Eric: have you never tasted a turkey pot pie? Or had a hot turkey sandwich with gravy? These rank in the top inventions of mankind, right up there with the internet and penicillin.
Maybe it is not part of Chinese culture. I don’t remember seeing lamb in Chinese restaurants either.
It may or may not count as “Chinese” food, but I was at a HuHot restaurant on Wednesday, and they had added turkey to the buffet of meat choices. I presume it is seasonal, and, in my opinion, really did not pair well with the vegetables and sauces.
Lamb is quite common in northern Chinese gastronomy due to the influence of Muslim traders on the Silk Road. Americanized Chinese food is derived mostly from southern China, which is all pork, chicken, and seafood. This pattern is starting to change in boston’s Chinatown and others as the population of visitors from the rest of China explodes. Turkey though, I’ve never seen that on a menu outside of the Americas. Europe’s holiday bird seems to be goose.
The family holiday dinner is dead, in the post family era. The only ones eating out on the big holidays are Chinese & former dot com founders.
The turkey, despite the name, is a New World species and so could not have been part of the Chinese diet before the Columbian era. Some of the New World products became big hits in China – chile peppers. Others were moderately successful but not in the way they hit big in the West -corn, potatoes. Turkey didn’t make the cut. We had guests from Japan a few years ago and I asked them if they had ever eaten turkey – the answer was no. Certainly a whole turkey is more than most Asians would want at a single sitting. Asians also did not have ovens in their homes traditionally. But if the turkey was appealing, this could have been overcome. It’s common in China to buy meat that has been roasted and hacked up – ducks, roast pork chicken, etc. I guess turkey was not appealing to them – it’s very lean and dry.
PS, I just cooked turkey breast sous vide ( 2.5 hrs @ 145F) – it was more moist and juicy than any turkey breast I had ever had. It was almost good. (The USDA brainwashing that you have to cook turkey to 165 is false – the pasteurization kill curve is a time/temperature function. At 165, everything is dead the second you hit that number, but at 145F if you hold that temp for 10 mins, everything is equally dead. The USDA just doesn’t trust the public to deal with that level of “complexity”. )