Fairway’s Butcher Demonstrates the Perfect Cut

By Laura B. Weiss
foodandthings
Are you a hacker or a slicer when it comes to carving up your Thanksgiving turkey?  In my house, hackers oversee the dismantling of our Thanksgiving bird.  The turkey meat comes off the carcass in chunks that resemble blocks of moldering wood chips. So the other night, we strolled over to the Broadway and 74th Street Fairway to watch the market’s head butcher, Ray Venezia, demonstrate the right way to carve your Thanksgiving turkey.

Why does technique matter? So at the end of the day, you produce juicy slices of turkey. First, you have to “see what you’re doing,” said Venezia, a third generation butcher, as he applied his knife to the turkey’s joints, cracking it open like a walnut.  By the time he got to the breast meat, Venezia had already accumulated a beautiful platter of turkey meat.  For the best results, “slice against the grain,” Venezia advised, holding up a piece of white meat—and improbably—squeezing it so that juice spurted from the just-cut meat.

Fairway scion Dan Glickberg—he’s the fourth generation of his family to operate the company—worked alongside Venezia, hacking away at a second turkey.  Glickberg was supposed to represent the Thanksgiving Every Man. He earnestly sawed away at his turkey, glancing over at Venezia every couple of minutes. “Am I doing it right?” he asked repeatedly.  Venezia reassured him—not to mention the group of anxious soon-to-be-turkey carvers in the audience—that his knife skills were just fine.

Here’s a video of Venezia carving a Thanksgiving turkey.  Either you’ll find his demo reassuring. Or you’ll conclude that without a master butcher in the house, the whole thing is hopeless.

Video: Mrs Mo’s New Jersey Channel, hmorris0506’s.

(photo via flickr)

Laura B. Weiss is a food and travel journalist who covers the food scene on the Upper West Side at www.foodandthings.com. A version of this article originally ran on that site.