Random question that just occurred to me after seeing all these Turkey Day threads.
Could you “stuff” a turkey by butterflying/spatchcocking it and filling your roasting pan with stuffing and setting the turkey on top of it?
It seems like all the turkey juice that infuses a stuffed bird would happen and the flat roasting method would guard against the temperature issue and create more surface area for stuffing on the whole.
The cons seem to be that the stuffing might get too greasy and/or overdone roasting that way and there’d be nothing left to make gravy from.
Anyone tried it or seen a recipe that might cover it?
Yes, thats a perfectly acceptable way to do it. The flavor you get from the juices is great. I like gravy though so I wouldnt do it that way. I drizzle some pan drippings over the stuffing and bake in a seperate pan.
I’ve read that but how the heck do you do it? The stuffing has to bake a while and in order to do this you’d need to remove the juices from the pan before the bird was done. There simply doesn’t seem to be enough drippings to drizzle your stuffing AND make a gravy.
Man, just freakin’ stuff the turkey like God intended, why you want to go fooling about… I don’t care what Anthony Bourdain and common “modern” wisdom says. We’ve been stuffing turkey and cookin’ the hell out of our turkey for years and the white meat is moist from basting, and the dark meat is impeccable and heavenly from sitting in the drippings. Nobody has been sick from our stuffing in all the years, either… the only sicknesses we’ve had on Thanksgiving are minor alcohol poisonings.
But yea, I saw a food personality from sometime ago do it with smaller birds. Can’t remember who it was, but I believe he did it with a chicken. I think I have also seen it done with smaller game birds. I thnk the smaller birds probably would work better than a trukey
It would seem that this could easily be done, if you simply place some trimmed neck or butt fat down in a greased roasting pan and then pile a mountain of stuffing over the fat. Simply mold your turkey over the stuffing mound tucking everything in… quaarantine the stuffing and when you pull your cooked turkey off, you will have a dressing mountain surrounded by a lake of drippings.
I used to make turkey stock to add to my juices to make enough gravy to go around. Now I put the neck, and an addional wing or drumstick in the roasting pan along with mirepoix (onion, carrot, celery).
Dressing cooked in a shallow casserole doesnt take that long to cook. I take out my turkey when its done, spoon my drippings over the dressing and whip in the oven. You need to rest your bird for 20 minutes to a half hour anyway, unless you want all your juices all over the cutting board instead of in the bird. By the time I deglaze the pan and make my gravy, I can carve the bird, take out the dressing and start to chow.
My ex sister in law once served a spatchcocked chicken, which was cooked over a bed of peeled sliced potatoes. The drippings ran down onto the potatoes, and flavored them beautifully. Me, I’d have sliced up an onion or two and put that in the dish as well. However, from what I remember, she didn’t have much in the way of drippings left over.
So either you’d have to go with canned/powdered commercial gravy, go without gravy, or go without dressing. I don’t think that any of these options are really viable.
I swear I recently saw a cooking show where they did something like this, but I don’t remember specifics. I seem to remember there being something in between the bird and the stuffing to prevent too much fat dripping in.
I tried this exactly as the OP suggested today. My only problem was having an operational meat thermometer. The turkey was slightly under done. The thigh was more undertone than I can accept for leftovers, so I will be making lots of soup.
OTOH, the stuffing was wonderful. It absorbed every last bit of turkey juice and tasted like heaven.
Another problem , is due to the stuffing, there was no juice to make gravy. I had to fake it with a packet. Man does that stuffing taste good.
I recommend not putting the turkey on the top rack. Put the turkey near the bottom and use the top for other things. The first 20 min at 450 singed the top a bit.