Dark meat here, too. And for chicken, also. White meat goes into some kind of salad.

I prefer white meat when roasted, but dark meat when braised or stewed. That goes for both chicken & turkey.

I like some of each....but most people waaay over cook a turkey and the breast is dry and NEEDS lots of mayonnaise .

My favorite part of a roasted turkey (and chicken) is a crispy wing. Overall, I prefer dark meat.

White meat here with one exception. I love, love ,love the dark oval shaped pieces on the very bottom of a roast Turkey...actually any of that underside meat but only right out of the oven as I carve the bird.

Can't abide thighs , they gross me out !

Dark meat, whether turkey or chicken. Thigh is favorite part, flat part of wings second, and leg, 3rd. Yes, I know it makes no sense, that's just how it is.

There are always enough family around on Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, that the white meat gets eaten. I haven't roasted a whole chicken in years. I am slowly learning to use the white meat of a rotisserie chicken in dishes that kind of disguise the (lack of) flavor, and add moisture.

Rusty

I'm not a fan of turkey, much rather have chicken. I prefer the dark meat of chicken and turkey thighs are good but I'll pass on turkey legs because there are too many bones/tendons, or whatever White meat has to have a lot of cranberry sauce with each bite.

We eat both but overall prefer the white meat. The dark meat usually is the more leftover part and ends up in soup and turkey burritos.

chase- " I love, love ,love the dark oval shaped pieces on the very bottom of a roast Turkey." My mother always called those the "oysters". I agree, they're delicious.

I like the dark meat. Thighs are my favorite. Left to me, you could toss the rest of the bird but, fortunately, there are a couple of white meat eaters in the family.

I like chicken thighs, but not turkey. Much prefer the breast.

Turkey is the quintessential native fowl of the Americas, so ironic that most people in our part of it (the USA) don't seem to know how to cook it! What Linda said above, they overcook it and extract all the moisture from the bird and the result is just awful. I don't buy the whole bird anymore, just the parts (breasts and thighs). Just had it on the third day now! Absolutely delicious and succulent. On turkey, I prefer the white; chicken the dark. If you say you don't like turkey, you just have never had it done right. Chicken is more forgiving to cooking errors. Deep fried or in the bag is my favorite.

I generally buy turkey in parts also, and I use the white meat for sandwiches and the dark meat for meals on its own. When a whole turkey is roasted, I prefer the thighs, and I agree that the legs have too many tendons or other inedible parts. If I bought legs, I would use them only to make soup. When I cook breasts, I pretty much always smoke them or grill them over Mesquite to give the more flavor.

Cooking a turkey is dead easy. I think the problem is a lot of people who cook turkeys once a year don't know how to cook in general.

I like breast best, but turkey isn't my favorite bird, and I probably like it best because the flavor is milder. But I like the texture better too. No mayonnaise! Just plain sliced off the bird.

Some of those cheap turkeys they give away with your grocery order are born dry, and need help in the cooking to be moist and tender (added fat, extra basting, etc.). I do spend on really good turkeys, however, and just roast them with white wine underneath.

I'm a fan of dark meat, both chicken and turkey. I do not eat any poultry skin, though, just cannot eat the stuff, so I never eat wings, and the legs have those little bones and tendons, so my favorite part is the thigh.

Annie

Dark meat. And I love the crispy skin!

White meat all the way! But I too prefer chicken to turkey -- but hard to feed 20 people with chickens!

When I was about 15, Mom and I got into an argument on how to cook a whole turkey for Thanksgiving. She threw down the challenge for me to cook the dinner. I did, and she had to admit I did it better than she did. So until she passed, I cooked every year. But she still made the best meat stuffing. I stopped cooking one because Dad is not fond of it.

Which do I like best? At dinner the dark meat but for a sandwich, I want the breast meat.

I prefer white meat and DH prefers dark, so a roast bird works well. Between holidays, a roast chicken gets eaten efficiently.

Carol, my husband calls the tail the "Pope's Nose" too, it was the first time I'd heard that. There's actually an oil gland in there, I think it's usually removed (at least I remove it when I raise and process poultry).

Annie

In England, we call it the Parson' s nose lol

Turkey parts here, 4 thighs and a whole breast. If you bury the breast meat on a sandwich under Mayo cranberry slice of dressing I can eat it. On the other hand there are the others in the family who can not understand why I eat "That stuff"

I have also come to realize its much easier to get everything cooked to correct temp with the parts

I prefer dark meat on chicken and will not touch dark meat in turkey. Weird!

Islay - that's it! I misremembered. Dad's family is/was from London = )

FWIW, my mom always called it the pope's nose, too. She was Catholic, but from an old New England family and habit dies hard, I guess.

Two parts that never make it to the table - the Pope's nose and the testicles. I guess I'm just channeling my inner Andrew Zimmren.

Dark meat. I eat the white meat of turkey or chicken simply to be polite. I admit after awhile I get tired of being polite on that level. As for cold, as in a salad, the white bits grow even less interesting.

My cats love the white meat. But I refuse to share that wonderful dark meat with them, so... they don't know what they are missing.

Dark meat for me, don't really care at all for the white but will eat if there is no dark meat. I really don't care for the breast of chicken or turkey.

Sue

Ricky, please explain about Andrew Zimmern?

The first Thanksgiving

:-)

dcarch

Well, depends on the cook. If my MIL cooked it, there is no part of the turkey worth eating. Her rule for doneness is: If you poke it with a fork and no juice comes out, it's done.

If you can manage to chew it a while, you could use it as grout, LOL.

Most people I know overcook a turkey and I used to think that I just didn't like white meat. But when I started cooking my own, I realized that I can eat the white meat when it is cooked correctly. But we still prefer thighs or wings. The legs are more dark than we like, though. We probably cook a turkey thigh (one will feed both of us) a couple of times a month.

We do a potluck Thanksgiving as my entire family loves to cook. We have done deep-fried, turduckens, dry rubs, wet brine. My niece took over the roast turkey and after various experiments we all agreed wet brine - using about half the amount of salt called for; most recipes use WAY TOO MUCH salt - worked best.

As a rule we all prefer dark meat. But the way my niece makes it, the breast meat is every bit as good as the dark, on her turkey. As good cold as it is hot, too.

My mother also made a great turkey (and also experimented constantly; so her granddaughter is clearly channeling, LOL). One of her most interesting ones was a small fresh turkey, handled Peking Duck style. Very yummy!

This happened way, way back when my DH and I were first married: Having come from a family who took gourmet cooking seriously, it was a real shock the first time I sat down to my in-laws' idea of Thanksgiving. My MIL could roast a chicken perfectly well, so I was completely unprepared for the sad, dried-up, leathery 14-lb. bird I had volunteered to slice.

At the very first touch of the knife, the breast meat shattered apart. It could not be sliced, it was so overdone!

There was no gravy.

No stuffing.

Instant mashed potatoes.

A single lonely plastic bag of Green Giant creamed spinach for 8 people!

A casserole of mashed CANNED yams, with 2 cups of brown sugar and a topping of mini-marshmallows (which I hate).

From then on I flat-out refused any Thanksgiving invitations from my in-laws. Regular dinners, even special event parties, were fine. It was just the turkey/gravy/etc. they couldn't quite wrap their minds around. They had moved from Hong Kong when my DH was 12, so Thanksgiving was an unknown concept, and turkey something strange/weird they never cooked otherwise.

jakkom, my Grandmother used to cook any pork or poultry until it was well done and then some, it had to be "safe". Y\our description of the turkey sounded like a goose Grandma cooked one year and she didn't have Hong Kong as an excuse, she was from Ohio!

Other than that our meals were delicious and we always had enough and then some, but the bird was always dry and tasteless. I made up for it with extra pumpkin pie. I did learn to enjoy turkey when I was an adult, though.

Andrew Zimmerman travels and eats odd and bizarre foods...including turkey tom-toms.

Oh! Thanks, Linda. I didn't get it that it was just a reference to Bizarre Foods.

I prefer the white meat of the turkey. I use Martha Stewart's recipe where she covers the bird in cheesecloth that has been soaked in wine and butter, until the end when you brown the skin. I also only use kosher turkeys. With these two prerequisites, the breast meat is juicy and flavorful.

I like the dark meat flavor, but don't like wrestling with the thin bones and gristle of the thigh and leg.

White meat for sandwiches, dark meat for everything else. Honestly, as long as I have the stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and cranberry sauce I could do without the turkey. I do eat a small portion but it's not the star of the show in my book.

Dark meat absolutely, and how disheartening that so many people are also preferring it these days. Darn!

I don't care how well the white meat is cooked, it's sadly lacking in flavor. I make a good gravy, so I'll eat it as a vehicle for the gravy, including as a roast turkey sandwich.

My favorite chicken salad is actually made with leftover turkey moistened with pan drippings kept for that purpose, and some of that meat can be white if I'm not able to send it all home with guests.

Btw, Fawnridge, I once hopefully purchased a skinless, boneless turkey breast. My husband ate a bunch of it sliced in sandwiches loaded up with mayo for flavor, but I threw the rest of it away. I may never purchase a breast alone again, but if I do it'll be skin on and bones in for their flavor and moisture, and to create drippings for additional flavor after cooking.

"Ricky, please explain about Andrew Zimmern?"

The man never misses an opportunity to eat testicles.

Jakkom, I'd give Thanksgiving at the in laws' a huge swerve under those circumstances too. :-P.

I like chicken thighs and drumsticks, and now hubby is learning to like it. I really dislike turkey drumsticks though, they're too dark.

Hubby will only eat the white meat of turkey and I'll eat both white and the thigh. The rest of the dark meat and leftover breast gets used in turkey tetrazzine, hot turkey sandwiches, etc. It all gets used eventually.

I cooked a turkey breast last Christmas as it's always just the two of us, but it wasn't the same. I missed having the whole turkey.

We both love roast chicken, but they're always so much more money. $2.49/lb vs .99c/lb for turkey. I always try to find the smallest turkey I can, they're usually in the 8-10 lb range.

Jasdip, Do you have one of the Food Savers? It's only two of us also. but I go ahead and cook the whole turkey, 15-20 lbs. I pull it off the bone and put in the quart Food Saver bags. It is as good several months later as the first day and I get to have all the turkey. I also have the broth and the bones for stock. Each bag ends up being 1 to 1 1/2 lbs.

white meat. i don't cook the whole meal so no left-overs. while the "crazies" are out on "Black Friday" I will be making a mini T-Day meal... half a turkey breast and a few wings.

my Dad was a white meat fan. we would rotate where we would eat... with grand parents, aunts/uncles, & cousins. one year, when it was our turn he made possibly the FIRST "deconstructed" turkey. two whole breasts, a few drumsticks and several wings. we put the stuffing in foil "bowls" and sat breasts on top during roasting time.