Rubbing down my turkey! I feel like she's going out into the sun; put some sunblock on her.
Don't want you to get fried little lady.
Hey I'm Megan Mitchell and I'm here in the Thrive Market Test Kitchen,
and today I'm gonna show you how to make a turkey.
Thanksgiving is upon us and I'm going to show you my tips and tricks for making a
turkey, carving a turkey, maybe making some gravy - I don't know. Before I do be
sure to like, comment, subscribe. If you're wondering what Thrive Market is, it's an
online market that sells organic and non-gmo products and guess what?
Turkeys! Yeah, straight to your door; you don't even have to leave you have to put
pants on. So Thrive Market just launched their holiday meat bundles, they have these
beautiful turkeys. It might be hard to find a free-range organic turkey. Thrive
has them, and they will come straight to your door. Once again the "No Pants" thing,
I'm just gonna keep - I feel like that's the highlight of this, and it actually
comes pre-cooked. Why get a turkey that's precooked? One - saves time; two - saves oven
space. The turkeys not going to be in there all day long so you can make your
green bean casserole, your sweet potato casserole, whatever - your pies, you have
more room in your oven and I don't know. Sometimes it can be kind of intimidating;
is it cooked, is it not? I don't want to serve it raw to my in laws; maybe I do,
maybe I do! No I don't, I love you Steve and Nancy. I don't want to serve it raw, and I
also don't want it overcooked. When you get this little angel baby, she will be
frozen. It has thawing instructions and
reheating instructions on the back, but it says about four hours per pound. This
is an 11 pound bird; I know math, that's 44 hours. So it'll take two to three days
to defrost; so just think ahead. You can not just pop this guy out the day
before. You got to defrost it. I'm going to show you ways to jazz it up; you can
stuff the cavity with citrus, herbs, onions, garlic, which gives it even more
flavor. You could do a rub on the outside; you could just do some salt and pepper
and oil to crisp up the skin. You could do a compound butter. There's so many
ways to jazz up this turkey so it feels like yours, it feels special, it feels
like: "hey I made this." So I've taken my bird out of the bag, I patted her dry, and
I have a roasting pan and roasting rack , because I don't want my
bird sitting directly on the pan. Because it might stick and it might burn, so you
always want to have it elevated a little bit. If you don't have a roasting
rack like this, you can do a baking sheet, you know like a cooling rack. You can do
that or you can crumble up a couple little balls of aluminum foil and raise
it up on that; or you can even just cut up lemons oranges onions just something
to lift it off of the pan because you don't want it directly on the pan. I'm
gonna stuff the cavity with some citrus and herbs, and then it'll drip from the
bird and it'll make a delicious gravy - a pan sauce that we can make into a gravy.
So depending on how large your bird's cavity is, you can cut them into quarters
or halves - just depending on how how much room is in there. Then I have
rosemary, thyme, and sage; stuff that up. I feel like these are very Thanksgiving
flavors. So now that I have some flavors inside, I have two cups of low-sodium
organic chicken stock; I'm just adding that to the bottom of the pan to help
start my gravy as well. So all of the drippings from this will go into here;
and it also steams a little bit, so it gives it a little moisture. I have an
herb butter mixture; because I like butter, I like herbs. Same herbs that I
used: rosemary, thyme, and sage. Room temperature butter; slather this on some
bread and bake it and you got some a delicious garlic bread. Just sayin!
I'm done that's how you did know it's kind of flour on there you want to pat the
bird dry too before you do this or it'll just slide right off. Clean hands; just
gently massage the butter into the bird. So if you're wondering why I'm putting
the butter on the outside on the skin instead of under the skin, if she was raw
I would have put it under the skin. So that way it melds into the meat itself;
but she's already cooked, and I don't want to mess up her skin. She's been
taking collagen and she wants to look young. Okay I'm not gonna mess up her
skin right now, so I'm just putting it on the outside. It'll gently infuse and if
you can also add like a little bit of
this into the inside of the cavity - it never hurts just season the outside with
some salt and pepper. Like I said, when this bakes,
the butter is gonna melt off, it's gonna form a delicious pan juice in the bottom hand
drippings. This looks great. Pop this in a 325 degree oven for about
an hour and a half, hour forty-five. If it starts to get a little brown or a little
crispy on any part, you can lightly tent it with foil till it's ready to go. This
bird is still a little warm. So I'm gonna use two forks to move it over to my
carving board, looks great, it looks pretty. So before I start I want to show
you all of the pan drippings inside my roasting pan, I'm gonna make a real
delicious gravy out of that all right. This seems a little intimidating, but I'm
gonna show you the way that I like to carve it. What I like to do is, I like to
cut off the breasts first and then the wings and then the leggies. So use the
breast bone as your guide. Go to the side of it so this comes out in one chunk, and
I like to cut the breast this way because everyone gets a little piece of
skin. Everyone gets a little bit of the breast. So this is my way that everyone
gets a little bit of the crispy delicious skin, and a bit of the white
meat. Let's just take this on the platter if you want if you don't want to feel
rushed, and you're carving the turkey and everyone's waiting - I feel like that's
like everyone gets crazy - like give me food. So if you want
cook your turkey a little earlier, carve it; you can keep it in a pan you can put
it back in the roasting pan with the juices and then you can keep in your
oven at a very low template 200-220, and it just keeps it nice and moist and warm.
So you're not rushing and carving, and you lose a finger or something like that.
So I don't know, give it a try! You don't want to be rushed, you want to take your
time, you want it to look really pretty. On to the next breast, do the same exact
thing. Like I said use the bones and the cartilage as your guide. Then kind of
guide your knife where to go, headed into pieces. I immediately want um
a turkey sandwich; that's my favorite part about leftovers, like think about
while I'm eating Thanksgiving dinner I'm like ooh! Alright, now I'm gonna take
off the wings. I'm switching utensils, I'm going to scissors. This is where you have
to get down and dirty to take the wing tips off. It doesn't have to be perfect,
like whatever little bits are left on the bird, you can pull them off and then
also it'll add more flavor. So I'm gonna use this, and I'm gonna make a bone broth.
So you want some that cartilage and those bone,s but scissors just to help
you get into the areas that maybe it's a little tricky to do with a knife. Now
some people don't put the wing tips on or the wings, sometimes they do. It's my
grandma's favorite part, so I always include it for you a little biscuit! Now
we're going to the legs, remove this little part you can see all these
amazing aromatics in here: oranges and lemons, rosemary. You can discard these,
they're no longer of use to us. I no longer need you; you did a great job.
Now this one's for me. Just put that one on my plate, I'll take a good nap after so this. Looks
beautiful, but I want to make it a little more festive so I have rosemary. I have
some fresh bay leaves, and I have sage; and I'm just gonna tuck it around the
bird. Just to make it look nice and festive and pretty; you definitely don't
have to do this, but even if you're just with family or friends, you want to make
it special. I also have citrus, I have meyer lemons lemons, I have persimmons,
and I have pomegranates. You can use whatever you like, but I stuffed the
cavity of my bird with citrus so I thought it'd be nice to also garnish
with some citrus, and that's how you carve a turkey! My little trick of
getting the breasts off, so everyone gets a piece. You'll be the star of
Thanksgiving if you put this down at the table!
You remember those pan drippings
that I showed you in the roasting pan, I poured them into a large sauce pot and
you never know how much you're gonna get from the bird, so what I like to do is I
have another pot on my stove and I have low sodium chicken stock in here. If you
can find turkey broth or turkey stock, you could do that as well; and I add
fresh herbs, those same herbs that I used to stuff the cavity, and put on the
outside. So I have sage, thyme, and rosemary. It just infuses
it with even more flavor, and then I'm gonna mix them together. So that's nice
and hot. Fine mesh strainer. I'm just gonna use this to catch any of
the herbs pour it into my drippings pan,
and that's my gravy.
Their like it's really watery Meg; it's really loose.
Before I started making everything for Thanksgiving, I'm just kidding I don't
make everything. But my mom is celiac so she cannot do flour, a lot of people do
the butter in the roux to thicken their gravy. She can't do that.
So we do cornstarch and water, and it acts like a thickener - and the thing about
cornstarch slurry, first of all you need to make a slurry. You can't just pour
cornstarch directly in there, it'll glob up and won't work. So you want to take
cold water and you want to add the cornstarch, and this is the slurry and
the other thing about cooking with cornstarch it has to come to a full boil
for it to fully activate into thicken. So if you add it and it's not boiling,
you're like it's still super loose, it's like well you got to give it a second
because it'll thicken up real quick. So whisk this is that a simmer; I'm gonna whisk
and I'm going to slowly add in my slurry a little bit at a time,
and then you will feel it start to pull on the whisk, and you'll feel it and
you're like, "I think it' ready, I think its ready," and then you can always add more.
I want to whisk wel,l I'm also not left handed this is a little hard for me but
you want to whisk while you're adding the slurry,
so you don't get any lumps or clumps and then we'll bring this to a boil and let
it fully thicken. At this point you can season with some salt and pepper, if
you want to wait and taste it - be very careful, it is boiling. You want to taste
it before you add the salt, because you don't want to over season it, and then
just let it come to a boil they came out just gonna add a little more
oh yeah I can feel it I can feel the way that it pulls on my whisk fat it's
thickened, and that's my foolproof way to make gravy - gluten free. You don't have to
worry about lumps, because I feel like sometimes with a roux you can get some
lumps. There's no weird packaged gravy or jarred gravy, you know exactly what the
ingredients are that you're putting in it.
I hope you make it, I hope you have a
great Thanksgiving! You can find all the products that are used and the turkey at
thrivemarket.com/prepschool. Happy Thanksgiving
But now that I had this orange - oh my god it's not an orange Megan, it's a lemon.
You want to take cold water over the canyon, and that will get you into
Beverly Hills. L.A. jokes!!
you