How You Gonna Cook That Bird?

This is it!! Thanksgiving week!  I can taste that turkey already!!!  And I do love me some turkey!!  Sure, all the side dishes are awesome ...the classic cranberries, stuffing and gravy, sweet potatoes and green bean salads.  Plus the regional or ethnic extras that make each family's meal unique to them.

Pies?  Pick your poison. (man, that doesn't sound right but you know what I mean! Pumpkin, apple, cherry, mincemeat, blueberry and more!

But let's face it.  It is the the bird that brings the buzz.  So how do you cook it up?  That actually kind of depends on where you live!

The folks, the carnivores, the meat experts over at seriouslysmoked.com put today's technology to work by way of twitter data geotagging to put together a map showing how people cook their turkeys.

THIS shows the map of current culinary practices and popular turkey tactics.  What we see is that, like Elvis, roasting is still the king,   29 states, including Washington, reach for roasters as the best way to prepare the turkey.  Deep Fried is deep in second place with 16 turkey tasting states choosing to deep fry the feast. Lastly, 5 states smoke 'em if they've got 'em... while grilling didn't win a single state.

What turkey producers officially call the birds might give a clue to the best way to cook them.

"A mature male turkey is called a “tom” or “gobbler,” a mature female is called a “hen,” a yearling male is a “Jake,” a yearling female is a “Jenny,” and a baby is called a “poult.” In the farm trade, a turkey under 16 weeks is a “fryer” and those 5-7 months old are called “roasters.” A group of turkeys is referred to as a flock, a “rafter,” or a  “muster.”"

These cooking conclusions are based on geotagged twitter data since November 1st, tracking tweets and hashtags about how people are going to cook their turkeys this year following hashtags such as #roastturkey, #deepfriedturkey, #smokedturkey, etc. as well as phrases and keywords such as "roasted turkey recipe," "deep-fried turkey recipe," and "smoked turkey recipe." Over 80,000 tweets were tracked.

80,000 by the way is about the number of leftover turkey sandwiches I could easily eat in the month of December...how about you?