This roasting method works perfectly for my turkey, year after year !Okay, I promise that the Christmas recipes are coming to an end now ! I just wanted to post about how I have managed to find a method to cook the perfect turkey – well, it works for me and has done since I first tried it several years ago when I was cooking a turkey on my own for the first time, for a crowd of guests who came out to our farm for Christmas (not this farm, the very remote one we used to live on). I cook both turkey and ham each Christmas. (Ham to follow soon as we are having it again tonight to see the New Year in, so I will photograph it then !)
This is one of Delia Smith’s methods, I copied it down by hand into one of my recipe books & have added notes over the years, but the method originates from her. (For those of you who don’t know her, she is a well known English cook renowned for cooking hearty, home cooked meals and traditional English fare in a simple & easy way.)
Each year I have to pre order my turkey in October or so. I place an order with our local butchery, who import them – usually from Kenya, although one year during a great turkey shortage (bird ‘flu ?), they got them in from as far afield as Brazil, I think ! I always get the milk fed nightingale turkey. Have you ever eaten a turkey which tastes like fish because it has been fed a diet of fishmeal ? (like a lot of the chickens we get here) They taste awful – eghhhh !
This is one of Delia Smith’s methods, I copied it down by hand into one of my recipe books & have added notes over the years, but the method originates from her. (For those of you who don’t know her, she is a well known English cook renowned for cooking hearty, home cooked meals and traditional English fare in a simple & easy way.)
Each year I have to pre order my turkey in October or so. I place an order with our local butchery, who import them – usually from Kenya, although one year during a great turkey shortage (bird ‘flu ?), they got them in from as far afield as Brazil, I think ! I always get the milk fed nightingale turkey. Have you ever eaten a turkey which tastes like fish because it has been fed a diet of fishmeal ? (like a lot of the chickens we get here) They taste awful – eghhhh !
So, here is my turkey cooking method, adapted slightly from Delia's -:
Preparing the turkey- :
Remove the giblets, liver, neck etc from the turkey & reserve these for making the gravy stock/base. Make sure that the turkey is at room temperature before cooking it.
Fill the cavity of the turkey with stuffing – don’t pack it in too tightly though. (To make my stuffing I take a 500 gm packet of sausage meat, a handful of bread crumbs, a tablespoon of dried sage, a bunch of fresh chopped parsley, 3 chopped onions, 1 beaten egg & some salt and pepper & mix all together with my hands until well blended).
You might need to secure the neck flap/cavity openings with a wooden kebab skewer, broken off so that it fits into the oven. Place turkey in a large roasting pan.
Now slather salted butter thickly all over the outside skin of the turkey. Place bacon rashers over the butter in rows (sometimes I do this, other times I don’t – this year I left the bacon off). The butter/bacon make for a really moist turkey. Season the turkey with salt & pepper. (Not too much salt as the bacon & butter are quite salty already).
Delia says to wrap the turkey in a ‘tent’ of tin (aluminum) foil, in effect creating and oven within an oven. To be honest, my oven is not large enough for this so I simply take a large sheet of tin foil and place it tightly over the top of the turkey. I usually roast my turkey breast side down.
Now comes the cooking part -:
Place the turkey in a 240’C/475’F/Gas Mark 9 oven for 10 – 15 minutes to give it a blast of heat.
Then turn the oven down to 180’C/350’F/Gas Mark 4 & cook the turkey for about 3 hours (depending on size/weight of turkey – see note at end for guidelines) **
Then remove the foil, baste the turkey with the juices found at the bottom of the pan, & return to the oven to cook for a further 40 minutes at 200’C - 220’C/425’F – 450’F/Gas Mark 7 - 8.
Remove from the oven, removing the bacon rashers too & adding them to the juices at the bottom of the pan (these can then be added to stock to make a gravy).
To check if the turkey is cooked, pierce the thickest part of the leg with a skewer & press it – the juices should run clear. You can also tweak the legs slightly – if they have some ‘give’ then the turkey is done. You should also notice juices bubbling under the surface of the skin.
Allow the turkey to rest for at least ¾ hour before carving it. This is so that the juices can be re-absorbed into the meat.
** As a guideline, a turkey should be cooked for 1 hour plus 20 minutes per kg (= total cooking time). Eg. a 5 kg turkey should be cooked for approximately 2 hours and 40 minutes.
Enjoy the last day of 2008, everyone – see you in the New Year !
