The secret to a tasty turkey at Thanksgiving is brining: but before this traditional holiday on Thursday, Americans were asked by the authorities not to carry out this gastronomic operation in the Great Salt Lake, in Utah.
Employees at this famous natural park in the American West found the carcass of a drifting poultry, which its owner apparently let escape while he was trying to tenderize it for the family feast.
“Here’s your annual reminder not to use the Great Salt Lake to brine your turkey,” park officials quipped on social media this week, posting a photo of a still-wrapped bird coated in grass and mud . Brining involves soaking the turkey in a salt water solution with different herbs and spices before cooking so that it is nice and tender and full of flavor.
This operation, similar to a marinade, takes on an almost sacred character during Thanksgiving, where the meal shared with family by the vast majority of Americans is even more anticipated than that of Christmas. But the salinity of the Great Salt Lake “is too high for good brine,” park authorities insisted.
“The waves can be very strong,” they added, “and there is a good chance you will lose the whole turkey, like this person.” The Great Salt Lake is one of the largest lakes on the planet. Its water is so salty that many tourists come to float there effortlessly, like in the Dead Sea.
In forty years, it has lost two thirds of its surface area, the victim of an agricultural sector and a mining industry that consume too much water, and of global warming which reduces the flow of the rivers supplying it. The lake reached a historic low level in 2022, after years of drought. The water then became so salty that the brine shrimp, an important source of income for the local economy, began to die. If it were to disappear, the neighboring city of Salt Lake City would become unlivable, because the lake bed contains arsenic and toxic heavy metals, which contaminate the atmosphere during dust storms.
