Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.
A freezer has been rolled out at my local grocery store to house the last few turkeys that went unsold through Thanksgiving weekend. They’ll lie there, a mass grave of Butterballs, before undoubtedly being spirited away from the aisles for the next calendar year. If you were buying any other protein—chuck roast, pork shoulder, even a few Cornish game hens—this would be an absolute steal. What’s better than having a reliable dinner for a family of five on hand? With leftovers to boot? But alas, according to our social contract, whole roasted turkey can only be served on exactly two dates in late November and late December. If you pull a sizzling bird from the oven in the middle of June? You might be subject to a wellness check—or maybe even a government watch list—no matter how good it tastes.
This year, I’m breaking that cycle. On my next grocery run, I’ll be returning home with one of those lingering Butterballs, so that its bountiful carcass may lie in the bowels of my freezer. And someday soon—March? August? October?—that turkey is getting denuded, oiled, and roasted, for no occasion whatsoever, adding a vibrant splash of color to a random weekend. Thanksgiving 2025 is so far away it might as well not exist, but to hell with it—I’ll still be keeping a turkey in the chamber. After all, whole roasted turkey is—and should be—a year-round food.
I know what you’re thinking. Doesn’t this break the rules? Isn’t there an elemental axiom about intact turkey that restricts it to the early winter? Maybe you’re assuming that there’s something perverse about keeping a frozen turkey around for months on end, because—on the day of its roasting—it will have become poisonous and inedible. That’s not true at all. Frozen turkey retains its premium quality for at least one year, providing plenty of coverage for my future banquet. Perhaps you’re thinking about all of the elbow grease that goes into a Thanksgiving Day prep—the countertop cluttering, and in-law wrangling, and gravy rationing—and are loath to go down that road twice in one year. But remember, those concerns are specific to the feast, not the main course. Want to experience the delectable mildness of turkey meat, and the subsequent turkey sandwiches and turkey stock, without the logjam of the holidays? Sounds like you need a turkey in the chamber!
Of course, this practice would be much more accepted if whole turkeys were more readily available. Yes, my grocery store is replete with the minor exports of the turkey industry—I often have at least two pounds of ground turkey on hand—but plucked, broiler-ready birds are brought in specifically for the Thanksgiving festivities. For instance: Trader Joe’s didn’t start hawking turkeys until Nov. 14, and its leftovers after the holiday are typically sent back to butchers who reduce the protein into more flexible foodstuffs. I understand why that is. Chicken, the other poultry, is still, by far, the most popular meat in the world, to the point that human beings slaughter 74 billion of them every year. (Compare that number to the mere 218 million turkeys produced in U.S. farms during the same interval.) It’s a fact of life that Americans have been conditioned to mold their poultry intake around the smaller, more versatile bird, whose protein must be recontextualized with a pounding of spice—masala’d, battered, dissolved into a roiling gumbo, or submerged in an ocean of arrabbiata sauce—for it to ever taste interesting. You know what would break up that monotony? You know what would be a deliriously fun impulse buy to use sometime in February? Guys, I’m going to keep saying it: Have a turkey in the chamber.
Think of all the experimentation you could do! Every Thanksgiving we’re subjected to endless trendy turkey recipes, assaulting our inboxes en masse. Should you brine your turkey in buttermilk? Or cover it with red pepper flakes? Or dunk it in a slow-cooker with lemons? Who has time to dream up the perfect turkey when you’re only presenting it once per year? Well, now that you’re going to be roasting a bird within the bubbling humidity of July, the world is your oyster. There is at least one “summer turkey” recipe listed among the recipes of the New York Times. It calls for allspice berries and mustard seeds. Don’t want to fire up the oven and suffer in the sweatbox that will become your home for four hours? Maybe it’s time to embrace the black magic of smoked turkey. I know you’re just as excited as I am.
You realize, too, that for centuries, before we slowly poisoned the bounty of North America with expansion and extraction, this land teemed with wild turkeys, right? The Indigenous people of the continent domesticated turkeys thousands of years ago, and by the 16th century, turkey farms were popping up all over Europe, where the bird became a favorite among aristocratic tastes. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1800s—as Thanksgiving celebrations were becoming more widespread—that turkey became most closely associated with the holidays.
And if you aren’t able to scoop up one of the leftover post-Thanksgiving turkeys at your grocery store, dozens of artisanal turkey farms will gladly sell you a fresh (or frozen!) whole bird off-season, for they respect ancestral tradition, and understand that turkey is delicious even when it’s served completely out of context. (Though, it should be said, those turkeys are going to be much more expensive than what you can find in the grocery store right now. In a counterintuitive bit of market manipulation, the price of whole turkey actually goes down around Thanksgiving. Get in before it’s too late!)
At this point, I’ll admit that I’ve failed to address the elephant in the room. Turkeys are pretty freaking big, and most people aren’t cooking for more than one to four people on a given night. If you don’t have a big family or a well-populated dinner party on the calendar, those scrumptious leftovers will be hard to eat before they start to wilt. But to that, I’ll say again: Freeze the remains. Make a stock. Make turkey-salad sandwiches. Open a decadent can of cranberry sauce and drizzle it over the half-devoured carcass. Invite your friends over. Throw away all your forks. Eat like a king for a week.
Of course, until that time, you’ll have to store your bird in the freezer. This, too, is hairy—they take up so much space, and it’ll definitely necessitate some culinary reorganization. (Might I suggest spatchcocking one, refreezing it, and laying it flat at the bottom of the unit to save space?) But seriously, have you ever considered how much junk is clogging up your refrigeration unit? Ice cream pints with a quarter-scoop left, chalky veggie burgers that will go forever uneaten, browning bananas for the bread you’re never going to make—it’s all sad, the grim detritus of a depression meal. So cleanse thyself! Start anew! Purge all of that garbage for a dinner that will spark joy! Something that will bring a smile to your face every time you open the freezer! An enduring opportunity to spruce up an empty afternoon! Joie de vivre in a roasting pan! Let me say it one more time, loud and clear: Keep a turkey in the chamber!
Sign up for Slate’s evening newsletter.
