It takes heart to eat giblets

Sometime on Thanksgiving morning, amateur cooks all over America experience the same squishy moment of unpleasantness.

They reach into their turkey's abdominal section and feel for ... oh yuk ... the giblets.

With a tight grip and a good yank, those gelatinous organs sit right in the cook's hand. The question?

What comes next?

Today's America appears to have decided upon a new custom, that of depositing giblets right in the trash.

Our forefathers might have shuddered at such waste.

Tommy Klauber, the owner of Polo Grill & Bar and a chef himself, isn't surprised that butchers have noticed that giblets have become a little too gross for our kitchens.

"Butchers don't want them because they know they can't sell them," Klauber said.

Indeed, a higher percentage of turkeys are being produced today giblet-less. Some local supermarkets said they don't carry giblets alone because no one wants them anymore.

"Where do most giblets end up?" Klauber said, "Probably as dog food or cat food. They probably make more money selling them for another cause.

"Most people here just don't want to look at them. In Europe, people want the head and feet attached (to the turkey). They want to look into its eyes. Here, we just don't want to see it. It's kind of like the anchovy in a Caesar salad. People know that it tastes good, but they don't want to know what it is."

When Klauber uses the giblets, they usually end up in the gravy. "We sauté them up."

Andrea Pisano, the executive chef at Main Street Trattoria in Lakewood Ranch, doesn't eat turkey because his mom never made it in Sardinia. "It's just not in our tradition," he said.

That being said, Pisano loves to prepare traditional meals for family and friends, and if giblets make the stuffing or gravy better, so be it.

He said he cooks the giblets with some red wine and eventually blends in a food processor to be used in a turkey stuffing.

The key to his recipe is not telling the guests that the giblets made it past the trash bag.

"In America, people get grossed out," he said with a laugh. "I wouldn't tell my guests (that he used the giblets). Italians, we eat everything."

At MacAllisters Grill & Travern in Lakewood Ranch, head chef and general manager Devin Lay has not spent a lot of time as of late utilizing the giblets. However, he has been learning new ways to prepare giblets.

He grew up in Vermont and his parents, Kathy and Doug Lay, always presented the family with homestyle cooking that he best classifies as "family comfort" food.

Although he can't say for sure, Devin Lay is fairly positive that he ate giblets as some part of his Thanksgiving meal all through his childhood.

"Mom was good at hiding things," he said.

Like other chefs, Lay said he doesn't need to explain the entire process when he is producing a culinary masterpiece.

"I would use giblets for flavor," he said. "But, no, I wouldn't tell anyone unless they asked. I would want them to enjoy it."

As the years pass and Americans get more health conscious and educated about what they are consuming, Lay knows that more people will ask.

"Nowadays, people want to know exactly what they are eating," he said.

He has developed a gravy where use makes a stock with giblets and mirepoix, which is a fancy name for finely chopped carrots, onion and celery. He adds some sage, rosemary and thyme and suddenly giblets take on a completely different aroma.

A turkey gravy to die for his very special guests.

So, will Lay use the giblets in his own Thanksgiving turkey recipes?

"No," he said with a laugh. "At home, I just toss them."