A new take on the Thanksgiving turkey

The first thing you have to do, if you want to cook a Thanksgiving turkey the way Jacques Pépin thinks you ought to cook it, is to reach way back into your kitchen cabinet and haul out the sort of caldron you might use to steam lobsters. Next, adjust your expectations.

We understand if your first instinct is to resist. But proceeding with his recipe will yield a bird with an incomparable balance of crispness and moistness; we’re talking about white meat so moist that it stays tender even after a few days encased in Tupperware in the fridge.

So, yes, you’re reading this right: Jacques Pépin wants you to steam your turkey. He wants you to put that bird in that big pot (you can buy one for about $40 at a kitchen supply store), where hot vapors will melt off its fat. (If you prefer, use a large covered roasting pan.) Slicing deeply at key joints — between the drumsticks and thighs, and between the wings and breast — will help ensure that the meat is cooked through.

Then he wants you to roast it, letting the oven burnish its golden surface. Oh, and he’d like you to give it a glaze that combines the tang of vinegar with the subtle fire of Tabasco.

We know: it sounds a little weird. But once upon a time, the notion of lowering a turkey into a fiery lake of oil sounded weird, too, as did the idea of slow-cooking poultry in a plastic bag suspended in a warm bath. Today, though, deep-fried turkeys are a fixture on the American landscape, and high-end kitchens have immersion circulators for sous-vide cooking.

It probably felt a little awkward the first time you brined a turkey in a gargantuan plastic bag, didn’t it? Hey, even a turducken isn’t that weird anymore.

Besides, as Mr. Pépin will tell you, giving meat a sauna treatment is not as quirky a methodology as you might suspect. Virginia Lee, an expert on Chinese cooking, introduced him to the idea at some point in the 1970s, when he watched her prepare a pork roast with steam at the home of Craig Claiborne, the food writer and editor for The New York Times.

“She said, ‘We do that type of thing in Chinese cooking,’ ” Mr. Pépin recalled. He became better acquainted with steam ovens in kitchens where he taught and worked (the French Culinary Institute and the Russian Tea Room) and learned that the process adds moisture to the meat while allowing for “a nice crust,” thanks to that blast in the roaster. Fat collects in the pot beneath the bird, giving the home cook a fine base for a rich gravy, with the assertive flavors of the glaze providing a good counterpoint.

You may feel a temptation to forgo the glaze and opt, instead, for basting the shell of the turkey with copious brushings of melted butter. We mentioned this idea to Mr. Pépin, and it seemed to vex him. “I don’t see the point of adding more fat to it,” he said. “The glaze works out better.” A central purpose of the steam phase is to drain fat from the turkey so that it collects in the water and can be transformed into gravy. “I like to leave some fat in the gravy,” he said. “It gives some richness to it, but not too much.”

Then again, perhaps you’re among those who believe that “too much” is one phrase that should never be uttered when it comes to fat, butter and Thanksgiving. If so, carry on as you wish.

The same goes for gravy. If you don’t want to let go of your grandmother’s revered approach, then opt for what’s familiar. We’re guessing that Mr. Pépin won’t be in the kitchen to stop you, and the beauty of this cooking technique is that it matches well with gestures both old and new.

Either way, steaming represents the heart of the process, and it comes with a fringe benefit: It won’t gobble up your whole day.

“If you do it this way, you don’t have to leave the turkey that long in the oven,” the chef said. In a relatively short time you’ll have Thanksgiving dinner — and a new way of thinking about food.