Its really not too hard. The roux method tastes better than cornstarch or flour+broth imho. All that deee-licious butter.
Take a bunch of butter (4 tablespoons at least) and melt it in a pan. Whisk in several tablespoons of flour – enough so the butter+flour forms a thick paste (approx toothpaste consistency). Cook the paste, stirring it to keep it moving, until it browns to the color of a penny. Start adding turkey juice from the bottom on the pan, stirring as you add. Continue adding until gravy consistency is achieved. Add a splash of red wine, and salt and pepper to taste. If gravy seems too thick, add more liquid – turkey juice, wine or water. If gravy seems a bit too thin, wait, it will simmer down. It wil also thicken a bit more as it cools.
OTOH it is never a bad idea to have a spare jar of gravy on hand in case of mishap. Good luck!
Hello Again, my sister does it the other way, adding the thickener to the drippings (the fat).
She heats up the turkey drippings, which include butter from the Turkey recipe I posted above, in the roaster pan over two burners.
She then makes a mix of corn starch and cold milk. She mixes the CS and milk in an empty peanut butter jar so she can shake it up. One of the kids usually gets the job of shaking it.
She gets the drippings very hot, then while whisking quickly, she slowly adds the CS/milk mixture.
None of that non-fat, low-sodium, lactose-free stuff for us!
Now I’m really hungry for some crispy turkey skin. And gravy. And mashed potatoes…
I’m with deej - the best way to get juicy breast meat is to cook the bird breast side down. Here’s my recipe:[ul][li]Clean the turkey, inside and out. Pat dry with a paper towel.[/li][li]In a small bowl, mix salt, pepper, garlic (salt or powder - your preference), paprika and enough water to make a paste. Make enough that the paste mixture will coat both the outside and inside of the bird (usually between 1/4 and 1/2 cup).[/li][li]Rub the paste all over the bird, both inside and out.[/li][li]Use a large safety pin to pin the tips of the wings together over the top.[/li][li]Put the legs back into the leg clip.[/li][li]Do NOT stuff the cavity - it must be left empty.[/li][li]Using safety pins, pull the excess skin over the opening and pin it together with as many pins as you need to close it up.[/li][li]Place the bird on a rack in a baking pan breast side DOWN.[/li][li]The recipe calls for it to cook at 325º for 1/2 hour per pound, but cooking time may vary depending on your oven, altitude, etc.[/li][li]If you want to “show” the bird before slicing and serving, and therefore would like to have browned, crispy skin on the outside, just turn the bird over for the last 1/2 hour of cooking. You may even want to turn the broiler on for a few minutes to brown it up a little more.[/li][li]Don’t forget to take out all the safety pins before serving. :)[/li][/ul]
As mentioned above, the key to this recipe is that the cavity is empty and the bird is cooked breast side down. Most all the fat is in the dark meats and when cooked in this fashion it allows the juices to drip through the inside of the bird into the notoriously drier white meat, making it extraordinarily juicy and tender without having to baste it. It’s so tender that I’ve even been able to pull the breast meat entirely off the bone in one piece, so slicing it would be easier. And everyone who’s ever had my turkey, says it’s the best turkey they’ve ever had and always leaves with the recipe.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Shayna *
**[li]The recipe calls for it to cook at 325º for 1/2 hour per pound, but cooking time may vary depending on your oven, altitude, etc.[/li][/quote]
**
[NitPick]
A half hour per pound?
[/NitPick]
I don’t see anyone using the low, slow approach. I do this and I never have dry turkey.
After the bird is clean and prepped as several have mentioned, put it in the oven at 300 for an hour - to kill any surface bacteria. Then set the temp for 180-185 and let it go all night. Along with having a moist bird, you have the bonus of waking up the scent of roasting turkey. This method can take 12 hours or more, obviously the bigger the bird, the longer it takes.
Unfortunately, my mother-in-law is hosting this year and she’s of the old school. Ah well, it’s just one meal…
As to carving, no help here. Mine tastes good, but the platter of sliced meat is anything but picturesque. I never did master the “presentation” aspect of cooking.
What temperature kills salmonella? 300º for an hour will kill bacteria on the surface of the bird, but there’s no way it can kill any contamination that somehow got deep into the meat. Of course if salmonella is killed at 170º and you cook the meat long enough so that it reaches 180º, that would do the trick. But what temperature is the “maginc number”?
Has anybody ever butterflied and high-roasted a turkey? The current Cook’s Illustrated gives a technique. I butterfly chickens regularly - what you do is take a shears to snip out the bird’s back, then give a good shove to crack the breast bone so it lies flat. (I also brine my birds, which does seem to improve flavor help them stay juicy.) Flattening the bird lets you get the thighs and breast fully cooked at the same time, whereas otherwise by the time the thighs are OK the breast is dry and chewy.
According to the article, with a turkey you need a good chef’s knife to hack away the back, and then a Big Heavy Object to crack the breast. Then there’s the problem of avoiding smoke - if you roast a turkey on a rack at 500 deg., your smoke alarm just won’t quit. So they recommend putting stuffing under the bird, which sops up the juices and, they claim, gives great flavor. (If your stuffing recipe calls for fat, you reduce it to almost nothing). To maximize the amount of stuffing, you take the rack from a basic broiler pan (which are usually pretty shallow), and then set it atop a nice, deep disposable roasting pan.
The great thing is that apparently the roasting takes only about 1 1/2 hours for a 12-14 lb turkey.
Oh, and gravy you make before the turkey, first roasting the back and neck (and giblets, they say, but I can’t stand 'em), adding broth, etc.
Anybody ever used an approach like this? The finished product looks beautiful, everything supposedly comes out at the proper temperature (certainly true of butterflied chickens) and even with cooling, carving and the separate gravy step the whole process would take only about 3.5-4 hours.
For slicing purposes, I’ve always found that removing the cooked breast in its entirety, THEN slicing into pieces is much easier than trying to slice while it’s still attached to the bird. Just run a knife vertically down the side of the breastbone and work your way around the whole piece. Eventually, you’ll separate it from the carcass, just set it down and slice away! I don’t seem to leave as much meat on the carcass, either. Don’t know much about the darkmeat, it’s not a family fave.
For gravy, my mom uses a special kind of flour, Wondra brand, I think, and doesn’t need to do any fancy shmancy stuff to keep it from lumping. No roux, no shaking, no heavy duty whisking. Just sprinkle it into the drippings and stir. She does it right in the roasting pan on the stovetop adding water and flour (spices too) stirring the whole time. Works great, the flour is specially milled, almost granular, and doesn’t really lump up.
The only tip I have to offer is one given to me the first time I had to cook a big bird. If you have a big bird, stuffing under the skin over the breasts will help keep them from becoming dry during the cooking.
Other than that, maybe chicken broth in the stuffing instead of water…
That reminded me of something I saw Martha Stewart do a few years ago. She called it a monogrammed turkey, and what she did was to pull the skin away from the breast and lay fresh herbs on the breast, and smooth the skin back down over them. There might have been more to it than that, but it was beautiful. The herbs could be seen through the skin after cooking.
However, since I hate hate hate Martha Stewart with a passion, I refuse to even try a monogrammed turkey. If one were presented to me, I would probably refuse to eat it.
Alton Brown of Good Eats and the brined turkey fame does this with his Broiled Butterflied Chicken. It’s a blend of salt, pepper, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and lemon zest. He mashes it all up and puts it under the skin. The flavor is amazing. I’ve made it a quite a few times. You should try it.
(I can’t get the link directly to the recipe to work, so I’ve linked to his fan page, which links to the recipe. Scroll down; it’s #14)
It will probably be too late to help, but Alton’s Thanksgiving special will be replayed Wednesday at 9pm on Food TV. It covers everything from selection, thawing, preparing, cooking and serving.