Sad Thanksgiving: I ate 5 frozen turkey dinners, which are gross miracles of science
Food engineering sits in that uneasy space between inspirational and apocalyptic, like climate hacking or the Svalbard Seed Vault. When I see a frozen TV dinner filled with turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, bread stuffing, vegetables, and cranberry sauce, I stand in awe at how many strands of science and technology have come together. Quantitative genetics for the turkey breeding. Agronomy for the potatoes and vegetables. Biology and pathology to ensure the safety of the product. The processing of the foods requires detailed knowledge of the chemical components of the food, and the additives used to make it edible months after it was first cooked. And automated production lines actually do the “cooking.”
On the other hand, all that engineering changes the nature of the food. For example, take turkey frozen dinners, which sit at the very apex of the processed food pyramid, just above Twinkies and Doritos Tacos Locos. Making cranberry sauce on its own is relatively simple, but it requires time to gel together. TV dinner production lines are not compatible with that kind of production, though, so to make cranberry sauce work on a TV dinner, a 1967 Ocean Spray patent explains, food manufacturers simply toss in more starch. That’s one reason why many TV dinner sauces are so shiny: they use all kinds of gelling agents like “algins, vegetable gums, carboxy methyl cellulose.”
The turkey is modified, too. Generally, the turkey in these products is not sliced off a roasted bird. Instead, some turkey bits are mixed with some combination of starch, carrageenan, broth, soy products, and preservatives. It’s sort of a turkeyloafthing that can then be sliced very thinly and smothered in thick gravy.
I like my food simple and fresh, so, generally, I steer clear of these products. But, sometimes things go awry. Not everyone is living out an episode of Parenthood. Maybe some day, you’ll find yourself in the frozen dinner aisle at Walmart, wondering if it is worth taking a chance on a frozen Thanksgiving dinner.
Should you find yourself in a situation like this, I’m here to help. These are my tasting notes for five different frozen turkey dinners I found at Walmart, with special attention to how the actual dinners stack up with the serving suggestions on their boxes.
In all cases, I followed the microwaving instructions precisely, photographed the dinners as they were, then styled them for maximum Instagrammability.
Hungry-Man Roasted Carved White Meat Turkey
This one is really the classic. It’s got your turkey, your mashed potatoes, your gravy, your mixed vegetables, your cranberry stuff. Hungry-Man distinguished itself by being largely edible. The turkey slices did not have the texture of actual breast meat, and I assume they were reconstituted from ground up turkey bits and pressed together like particle board. The mashed potatoes were indistinguishable from KFC mashed potatoes, as far as I’m concerned. And the vegetables actually tasted good; they were, by far, the least adulterated thing on the plate.
And, I should note, Hungry-Man was the only frozen dinner that was large enough to actually fill up a plate, at least a salad plate, like the one I used in the photograph.