The internet is a lot of things, good and bad. So is social media. One way to think of social media is as a place where thousands of us gather and share some thoughts and observations — sometimes small observations that would seem too banal to ever bring up in an article, a speech, or even a normal conversation. Sometimes these small observations reverberate and catch on and end up changing the world.
So it is with Thanksgiving dinner.
In effect, when we all got in one large virtual room over the past two decades, somebody said, “I love Thanksgiving. It’s too bad that roasting a turkey in the oven all day leaves it so dry and bland.”
Then millions of people virtually nodded their virtual heads, and someone else piped up: “There are better ways to cook a turkey.”
“Can we all just admit turkey sucks?” was a typical post on the message board Reddit in 2015.
“Let’s be real,” journalist Josh Barro wrote on Thanksgiving 2013, “Nobody likes roasted turkey.”
“Turkey, especially the white meat of the turkey,” Barro wrote, articulating what everyone thought but no one would say, “is dried out and tough at most American homes, and must be doused in gravy.”
These bold confessions of uncomfortable truths led to a mini-trend of rejecting turkey altogether. Some adopted the old Italian tradition of serving a large ham. Barro recommended a crown roast of pork.
But Americans are problem solvers, and we love tradition. So among those households that found themselves wincing and agreeing with the internet about roasted turkey’s shortcomings, most went in search of ways to make a better Thanksgiving turkey.
Brining the bird overnight was the easiest way to manage this. Searches for “turkey brine” rose steadily after 2004, doubling by 2009 and nearly tripling by 2013, now holding steady at that high.
Deep-frying turkeys has become incredibly popular as well, leading to a slew of articles and YouTube videos on how to avoid doing it wrong — which can be disastrous.
And increasingly, you can find recipes for slow-cooking a giant Thanksgiving bird.
It’s the internet at its best: We come together to realize we are not alone in our problems, and then we go out in search of solutions.
And then we eat.
