Hi, I am David Tomov-Strock of Boston University's Food & Wine Experiential Programs.
Now I am going to be showing you how to butterfly turkey breast
and stuff it with a home made stuffing.
And using just a turkey breast for Thanksgiving is a great way to accommodate a smaller family.
If you don't want to do a whole turkey you can just do the breast and still get
the great Thanksgiving flavor that you are accustomed to.
So we have a whole side of a Turkey breast here.
We are going to flip this over so that it is skin side down and we are going to get
ready to butterfly it,
which means that we are going to cut it open.
There is one lobe here.
We are just going to peel that back.
We can see that it is much thicker right here so we are going to take our knife and just
slice it right open here.
And as we are slicing it we want to make sure that
we are keeping it about the same thickness as the part that we already opened up.
With just very smooth movements you are going to keep on slicing like this
until you can open up the breast all the way.
There is right now is too thick for us to stuff and roll up and tie up and roast.
What we want to do is we want to pound this out so that it gets a little bit flatter.
That way we can accommodate the stuffing and it is not going to be too bulky for us.
And before I grab my plastic, because I've been handling wrap poultry
I just need to wash my hands real quick.
So we have our plastic wrap,
we are just going to lay it out over the cutting board and we are going to rest the Turkey
breast right on top of the plastic.
Make sure i is totally opened up.
Then we are going to grab another piece of plastic and lay that down on top.
Now, what you can do is either take a mallet like this,
you can take a rolling pan
or you can take a heavy bottom frying pan
and just start pounding it out.
You are going to bang it down and spread toward the outside edge.
That way the meat can spread out, which is really what we want.
If there are parts that are thicker, those are the parts that you want to focus on.
That way you can end up with the uniform thickness across the whole piece.
When it gets to the thickness that you want, you can just peel the plastic off
and than you are ready to get started stuffing it.
You do want to stuff it from the cut side.
The skin will help protect the turkey from drying out and it will provide a little bit
of fat so it will be sort of self basting.
I have the staffing that is already made.
My homemade stuffing that I make is sweet Italian sausage with pistachios
and a little bit of chicken broth along with bread crumbs.
So I am just going to spread that out in nice even layer across the whole breast.
The only part that I am going to leave uncovered is the tenderloin flap.
That is going to be the inside flap.
We are going to use that to roll up the turkey.
Alright.
So there is all the stuffing right inside there.
Now I am just going to roll it right up.
And we want it so that the skin is on top and than so this does not fall apart
what we want to do is we want to tie it up.
We are going to use five pieces of kitchen twine
and than the twine we are just going to slide right underneath and than just tie that right
up.
All we have to do is get the roasting pan ready.
A lot of people don't have roasting wracks at home.
What you can do as a substitute is take your roasting pan
and just lay out a few stalks of celery and a few carrots.
And for the liquid I am going to use a little bit of turkey
turkey giblet stock that I made and also a bit of white wine.
The white wine will help add a little bit of flavor.
All we have to do now is set this in the oven.
We are going to put it in at 350 degrees
and we are going to let that cook for about two hours.
What we want is an internal temperature of 165 degrees for the turkey to be done.
Now I am just going to pull out one that we have already finished
and we are ready to start slicing open our turkey breast.
Now that the strings are removed we are ready to cut it open
and I like to use a long straight edge knife and a kitchen fork
so that will be the easiest way to slice through this.
And we are going to see the stuffing.
With every bite of turkey turkey you can get it by the stuffing as well.
And once that is ready to serve, you can just take it right on your platter
and you are ready to go.
And this turkey is going to be a great centerpiece to your Thanksgiving dinner.