Hello everyone! My name is Brendan Walsh. I'm the Dean of Culinary Education at The Culinary
Institute of America, and I'm here to help you today to carve your turkey for Thanksgiving. This
bird here was roasted, and allowed to rest for at least 30 minutes. That keeps it from when you
carve it, from all the juices running away from you. So what I want to do right now is I'm gonna
show you just simply how to take a whole bird and break it down so that you can carve it quickly and
efficiently. After you've allowed it to rest for a little bit. We see that we have the two legs on
the side and we have this little separation mark here, which are where the joints are, and here is
the breast. So this is the prime meat... what they would say, and what we're trying to do when we
carve it is keep all of this crispy skin on this bird as best as we possibly can. So what we're
gonna do is we're gonna start off by going right to these joints and working our sharp knife down
the skin on both sides of those joints, and what you'll see, you're going to pull back slightly,
and as you pull back on the bird you're going to see there's a natural separation here,
which guides you along this process. Okay, so you just run your knife and what you're going to do is
you're going to expose the joint that is right here, and you're able to just push up on that
joint, and you'll expose it and run your knife around it and now you have the leg off. So simple and ready to go!
Now what I do is I take, and I look at this, and there's a little trick that chefs
like to use where they take out the back, and they remove the wishbone, but when you're in the kitchen
and you're trying to serve your family, it's just as easy for you just to go right down. This is the
keel bone. Run your knife down the keel bone, slightly separating with your thumb. Just move
your thumb and start looking at where the breast and the keel bone are, and run your knife along
that breastbone and along the backbone, which is the little wishbone, which some chefs remove ahead
of time. So I'm going to take this breast off nice and clean, keeping the skin intact and running it
right down, until I see again the joint where the wing is, and here I have the breast removed and I
left these wings on because it stabilizes the bird when you're carving it, so it acts like a little
kind of anchor to keep the bird from moving around when you're cutting and it becoming a little bit
dangerous. So now I had the wing. Some people like to eat them. There's a natural separation that
occurs where the joints are. You can see it, and you take the wing. Generally, use these for stocks.
I know my kids love to eat these, so we put those on the table, and they munch away at them.
So it's cooked so well, that really if you just tug on it a little bit, you can see where those
joints are and it's very easy just to put your knife right in there and to cut that
out. So now this is going to become your turkey stock. Also I don't take that little wing out
because I'm in the kitchen doing all the work so I take this nice chunk of meat that comes
off of where the wishbone is, and you eat it! Delicious! So we'll take a leg and if we look at
it from this side, if you try to cut it from this side, it can be very difficult to know where that
joint is. So what chefs do is, they turn it over and you'll see there's a natural little separation,
like a little line that shows you where that joint separation is. You just bend it back a little bit, and
you'll see your knife goes through it really simply. There's your drumstick, and there's your
thigh, which is a beautiful cut, which everybody loves because it has that little bit of extra fat
in there, and what I'm gonna do is run my knife from one side of the bone to the other side of
the bone, just gently removing that bone to make it boneless. There we go. That comes out. All this
could be a great stock, which is gonna be a great soup, and now let's take the breast and show you
how to slice it up. So now that you have this all set up, it's simply the grain of the meat
goes this way, so you want to slice against the grain, which makes it a little bit more tender.
You cut even slices, trying to keep that skin on there, as best you possibly can, and keep it
as crisp as possible. So once this is all done and your concern is "Well, is my meat going to
be hot enough when it gets to the table?" Well, the beauty of this is you could pop this into the oven
just for a minute or two. Just put it in a hot oven for a minute or two and what will happen is you'll
warm it up just enough, and you won't make it dry. The thing about dry turkey is it was what I was
talking to you about earlier where if you don't allow the bird to rest, all that moisture just runs
off all over on your cutting board. I'm sure you all have experienced that. So what you want to do
is make sure the bird rests, and if you'll notice my board isn't saturated with with liquid because
I've allowed that bird to rest. Then you have this beautiful breast all sliced ready to go. You want
to warm it up a little bit, you just pop it in the oven real quick, right before we serve it.
Now you don't have that fear, which many people do, is that I made this beautiful bird but it's ice cold
when it gets to the table. Now on the thigh, you've boned it out, so now you can just slice nice slices.
You're all set, and you'll end up with this beautiful display of
dark meat drumstick, and breasts, which is going to be served hot,
beautifully moist, and ready to go for your Thanksgiving meal. Again, I'm Brendan
Walsh at The Culinary Institute of America. I hope you have a great Thanksgiving!