To eat a famous turkey on Thanksgiving you have to go through the brining stage: but before this traditional celebration this Thursday, November 28, the US authorities asked Americans not to carry out this gastronomic operation in the Great Salt Lake, in Utah.
Employees of this famous natural park in the American West found the carcass of a drifting bird, which its owner apparently let escape while trying to soften it for the family banquet.
“Here’s your annual reminder not to use the Great Salt Lake to brine your turkey,” park officials joked on social media this week, posting a photo of a still-wrapped bird covered in grass and mud.
Too high salinity and strong waves
Brining involves soaking the turkey in a salt water solution, with different herbs and spices before cooking it, so that it is very tender and full of flavor.
This operation, similar to a marinade, takes on an almost sacred character during Thanksgiving, where the meal shared with the 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 officials insisted.
“The waves can be very strong,” they added, “and there’s a good chance you’ll lose the whole thing, like this person.”
Historically low lake level
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, victim of an agricultural sector and a mining industry that consumes too much water, and of global warming that reduces the flow of the rivers that supply it.
The lake reached a record low level in 2022, after years of drought. The water became so salty that brine shrimp, an important source of income for the local economy, began to die.
If it disappeared, the neighboring city of Salt Lake City would be uninhabitable, because the lake bed contains arsenic and toxic heavy metals, which pollute the atmosphere during dust storms.
Source: BFM TV
