Samin Nosrat Thinks Your Thanksgiving Needs More Acidity
Samin Nosrat’s Netflix show Salt Fat Acid Warm (named after her incredible book ) is as informative as it is beautiful, with a warm calm emanating from Samin herself. Like anyone who thinks a lot about food, she has a few tips and tricks for the good old turkey day, including why you can use wet pickle, how to add a subtle flavor to your food, and why her? I’m going to eat crabs and fried chicken on Thursday.
In your show, you talk about your first Thanksgiving in America and how you kept coming back to cranberry sauce because it was a source of acid. Do you have any other favorite ways to add acid to your Thanksgiving dinner?
In almost every dish, there is a way to do this if you just start looking through the lens of “what is acid?” and try to include one of these [ingredients]. Therefore, for mashed potatoes, instead of butter and cream, use sour cream or crème fraiche. In the gravy – wine first, as you degade the pan – perhaps finish with wine for some fresh acidity. I always like to make salsa verde from roasted sage because sage tastes great for Thanksgiving and it gets really crispy when roasted . I make a large salsa verde with shallots, red wine vinegar, parsley and oil, and then add sage at the end and it goes really well with everything. I think in a filling that can definitely have a bit of flavor, you can start with sourdough bread. Then I like to add dried fruits there, like prunes. I’ll soak the prunes in white wine to make them look like little acid bombs. I also find it very important to eat at least one really sour salad. [ Editor’s note : like me ]
Have you cooked a lot of turkey for Thanksgiving?
I have! In one of the restaurants where I worked.
Do you have a favorite way to do this?
You know, I think you could go to great lengths to try the best turkey in the world, but even the best turkey in the world is still a turkey. I think we are trying to get the wettest chicken or something. This will not happen with this bird. So I think we could take action. Pickle is a great tool in my opinion, but it can be a headache. Breaking the tradition, separating the poultry into breasts and cooking them separately is of the utmost importance. So you can just brine the breasts and make them really moist, then cook them to the desired point. And you can bake the legs separately, which will make a big difference [because] you can cook everything in the right place . But honestly, this year my friends and I are ditching turkey altogether, and we will have Dungeness crab and fried chicken.
How do you feel about the wet brine versus dry brine controversy?
To be honest, although [wet] brine does fill the bird with water, I feel like it’s because most of the time [that] turkey stays dry, so if we get some water in there and it’s flavored with salt and delicious flavors, Then what is the problem? And I think salting is a pain in the ass, especially if you don’t live in a cold place where you could theoretically leave it in your garage overnight. How do you put this huge thing in a refrigerator or cooler? So in that case I guess go ahead and just salt it. But there is no magic you can do to turn a turkey into a chicken.
In terms of liquid pickles, you mentioned [in your show ] about chicken buttermilk , that would be fine with turkey, right?
You know that chicken [when salted in buttermilk] gets this beautiful black-brown skin – this dark brown skin. I fear the turkey – because it takes a lot longer – the skin will be too dark, so if you are going to do this, I suggested that you put the bird on almost all the time, and then remove the foil from and let it brown, because it it will brown pretty quickly, and it will brown too under the tent. I really think it might be delicious.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.