It is the most wonderful time of the year, it is the season for cooking
America's greatest bird, the turkey.
I know that scares a lot of people because
you've eaten turkeys that are dry, and the stuffing wasn't great, and the gravy was
so-so and so many things didn't work out. But once you learned the right way to
cook one of these magnificent birds, you will have perfect, holiday turkey forever.
So without further ado, turkey 101.
Here we have a brined and dried turkey
What you want to do,
so your turkey doesn't slide all over the place,
put it down on a towel,
take the wings and push them underneath the hip. So that way it's
gonna sit flat in your roaster so the next thing we need to pay attention to
is our stuffing.
I have onion,
celery, sage, fresh thyme,
parsley. Anywhere between one
and two tablespoons of melted butter.
Season this with salt, some ground pepper
Our chopped roasted chestnuts,
my favorite part of the stuffing.
The thing that my grandmother always used,
which were the chopped turkey livers.
I probably have, I don't know, about a half cup there, maybe three quarters of a cup.
You want to combine this mixture.
Just a few tablespoons of cream or milk.
Just enough to moisten it just a little bit.
All I do at this point is grab on to handfuls of
my stuffing mixture and just keep loading this baby up.
So we got this turkey from a local farm
and their processor left this big fat piece of
skin on. I'm gonna be able to secure both legs through that piece. If not, you can
use kitchen string and simply tie them together. Now I'm gonna gently flip it
over and I'm going to stuff this cavity in here with the remainder of my
stuffing. You can tuck this piece of skin back in with your fingers and it'll
actually do a pretty good job staying there.
Turkey is stuffed and we're ready to get into round two with this sucker. I want
to put all the goodies,
gizzard, neck, heart, liver because those are gonna
roast and caramelize and they're gonna give our turkey fond at the bottom of
this pan so much more flavor than it would have if they weren't there.
I'm going to add my onions.
Next thing we're gonna do is we're going to take our soft
butter, we're just gonna massage this all over it.
I sort of made my own poultry seasoning.
A little bit of sage, and thyme, and rosemary,
and salt and then I add
about a tablespoon of paprika.
I just shake that onto my bird.
One of the most important parts of seasoning,
is getting the rest of this bird because the bottom
of the bird doesn't necessarily need it, but the sides sure do. And place your
bird in your roasting rack. Then this roasting rack goes into the oven
until the turkey is cooked.
So just to be double safe,
since I already have that
beautiful, scorched onion and roasted liver
and neck vibe going on in there.
I just threw a couple cups of stock into the bottom of the pan. Now that's gonna
hold some of the drippings, it's gonna create a little steam heat in there but
it's not gonna prevent the skin from crisping.
Because by the time this thing is done, that will probably essentially evaporated.
That's a pretty stunning looking bird.
We're gonna temp our turkey.
Our dark meat is at 160°, so bravo for us,
we've successfully cooked this beautiful bird.
First thing we want to do, let's get these legs off. You can see
this dark outline that's where the wishbone is, so you just cut down right
through there. And that entire breast is gonna come right off.
Use your knife like a spatula.
Our pieces of stuffing with the skin.
There is our beautiful, perfect gravy consistency.
Turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing.
Bravo for us,
we've successfully cooked this beautiful bird.