Some of you may already know about my dislike for the standard roast turkey, an often juice-less and/or gamey bite of bird that requires a small vat of gravy to make it palatable. Unless that turkey comes smoked, brined, deep-fried, or Judy-fied, I'll take a roasted lamb over a roasted turkey any day, particularly the holi-days.

I say that as prelude to this: I don't feel a ton of sympathy for vegetarians during the turkey-heavy holidays. Frankly, they're not missing much, particularly if their families produced the same dried-out birds mine did over the years. My gaze becomes much more sympathetic, however, when I think about gravy, that savory soup of pan-drippings, thickener, seasonings, and, if you're lucky, giblets. How you can eat mashed potatoes without that brown gold is beyond my limited imagination.

There are, of course, a number of good veg-friendly gravies out there, like this one. This recipe includes a number of strong flavoring agents, including soy sauce, sage, and both garlic and onions, those two delicious bulbs of the allium family. The only strange thing about the recipe its is lack of specificity over "broth." I'd recommend a mushroom broth, which will give you a deep, woodsy flavor.

All together, I think the gravy will go a long way toward making you forget about your heathen, meat-eating brothers and sisters and cousins — and how much more fun they're having at the dinner table than you.

Los Angeles Times food writer Russ Parsons resurrects, possibly, the only recipe for roast turkey that could make me gush over the overrated Thanksgiving Day staple. This three-day salt-brining recipe, based on a chicken-cooking technique by Judy Rodgers, chef and owner at San Francisco's Zuni Cafe, first turned heads two years ago when the Times debuted it.

Writes Parson:

I wish everyone who had ever told me that "turkey is turkey" could have been there for the judging. These were remarkably different birds, and the clear winner was the dry-salted Judy Bird.

Our readers clearly agreed. The first week the recipe ran, I received more than 200 e-mails about it, many of them saying it was the best bird they'd ever cooked. Already this holiday season, I've gotten more than 30 e-mails from readers who saw the recipe at latimes.com/food. This turkey technique has legs too: Several major food magazines have since done their own versions.

In this recipe reprise, Parson tackles some of the questions that have arisen since 2006, including the obvious one: Isn't the bird too salty to eat? The answer:

No, the turkey is not salty. In the first place, you season it only lightly, about a tablespoon of salt for every 5 pounds of turkey — that's only a little more than if you were seasoning it normally. Then the saltiness is further reduced because the seasoning is absorbed through the meat rather than remaining on the surface as it normally would. This is also why you don't need to rinse or brush the salt from the skin before roasting — there shouldn't be any there.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Photo Mojo.