Cooking a Christmas Turkey successfully!

That is, in a way which leaves you with cooked, succulent, tasty meat that won't have you either reaching for the wine glass for some lubrication, or calling to God on the great white telephone owing to it being under-done.

Well, you can't ask for more than that, really - can you?

I must come straight out and say that the lovely people at Knorr were kind enough to send me the wonderful Foreman & Field box of goodies that enabled me to post up this "how to" blog post.  I have been the fortunate recipient of a number of these boxes - and would like to just say a public thank you to Knorr and to Jen Harris at Golin Harris, their P.R. people, for all the terrific produce that has graced my cooker in the past year.

I wasn't expecting such a huge box this year, but in it came with hubby buckling at the knees under the weight.  Impressive, eh?

Inside the box, there was the following :

·         SELDOM SEEN FARM TURKEY 4.5-5.5kg
·         LONGMAN’S FARM BUTTER 250g
·         EMMETT'S MILD CURE BACK BACON 250g
·         FORMAN & FIELD CHRISTMAS STUFFING
·         SELECTION OF FRESH HERBS
·         1 X ORANGE
·         12 x LUXURY MINCE PIES
·         CHAPEL DOWN NECTAR DESSERT WINE
·         2 Knorr Chicken Gravy Pots.

Well, the turkey speaks for itself - and I'll deal with that in detail in a minute or so.

The Longman's Farm Butter is unsalted and is the most glorious, creamy butter.  I have to admit that I felt it would be a shame to use it in this way and it is far nicer enjoyed on crackers with cheese, or on hot toast, so I used a supermarket unsalted butter.  Sssssh!  Don't tell!

The Emmett's bacon is so intensely smoked, it has an amazing aroma and three rashers is very definitely all that was needed!  I have intentions of using the remainder of the bacon in a French Chicken with peas & bacon recipe, in which it should be glorious.

Now, a word about the Christmas Stuffing.  It comes already frozen, so don't try and freeze it again - and use it as soon as you can.  Last year's pack got left in the fridge for 2 days and was simply horrid - it wound up in the bin.  This year's pack got cooked off on the day of delivery and the cooked stuffing balls are in the freezer.  It has a lovely flavour, being mixed with pork sausage meat, chestnuts and cranberries - but it very definitely won't wait.

The herbs and the orange are, well, herbs and an orange.  ~shrug~  What can I say?  Oh, except to say that the Foreman & Field parsley seems to be the nicest smelling parsley I've come across to date.  It's so fresh!

The mince pies are definitely to.die.for.  There is a hint of either vanilla or almond in the pastry - can't decide which - that marries the pastry up with the mincemeat so well!  I'm going to be using two of these in a frozen yoghurt recipe.  Hopefully, I'll make that tonight.

As for the dessert wine, well, I have yet to try that one - but it's from the Tenterden Vineyards.  What's not to like?

Now the recipe below follows Marco Pierre-White's recipe which is available from here where there is a printable version.  One thing I would mention, is that my timings are slightly different from his, for some obscure reason.  I followed the recipe that came in the box - but the recipe online is slightly different.  So you might like to just make a note of the timings I used, provided your turkey is also in the 4.5-5.5kg range.

ROAST TURKEY - FROM ARRIVAL TO CARVING

See that plastic bag peeping out?  Remove it!

So.  It's just you and the turkey.  It is sitting there, somewhat malevolently, in its wrapping, looking at you in that "go on - I dare you!" kind of way.  So you need to grab hold of any nervousness you have over the issue and throw it behind you, because - this time - you're going to win.

First job - unwrap your turkey and have a good look at it.  Is there anything that needs removing?   There may be whole feathers that might have been missed in the plucking or the bag of giblets that will be tucked into the cavity.  Believe me, roasting a bird with its plastic bag of giblets still inside, does not make for a tasty bird.  No. No.  So, for goodness' sake, just have a peep (out of one eye, if you're squeamish) and check.  One smooth move from the bird to the bin will take care of those giblets.  For those who either a) don't mind the smell of them cooking or b) have no sense of smell, put them in a bowl and use them to make the gravy with.  Be my guest.

By 'eck, 'twas a buxom bird!

Next thing, is to rinse out the cavity of the bird.  Now remember, you don't want to be splashing potentially germ-laden dilute turkey blood everywhere, so have the water running fairly slowly and be careful.  Once your turkey is rinsed, pat dry with some kitchen paper (yes, inside as well - you don't have to look) and leave it on the side while you splash some sink cleaner around your sink.  Best to do that now - you never know who might come along and want to dabble their fingers in it, otherwise.

Back to the turkey.  Or in fact, back to the flavoursome butter mixture that you're going to be putting under the skin of the turkey breast, that will both flavour the bird and keep the breast from drying out in the oven.  In this instance, I'm using orange, rosemary, parsley and bacon.  Don't feel you have to do the same!  You can use whatever combination of herbs, herbs plus bacon, bacon plus fruit, an assortment of spices, BBQ sauce - whatever floats your boat, to mix with the butter.  However, the butter is a necessary thing, as that's what keeps your turkey moist.

So - assuming you're using the same as I did - get a bowl and grate just the zest from the orange into it.  Don't include any of the white pith in there, as it is bitter and nasty.  Take three of the bacon rashers and remove the rind.  Chop the bacon finely and add to the bowl.  Take the rosemary and pick the leaves from all but three stems.  Chop the leaves very small and place them into the bowl.  Cut the stems from the parsley and chop the leaves finely - and put them into the bowl too.  Add a good pinch of freshly ground black pepper and 200g of unsalted butter.  Using your hands, scrunch everything together until well mixed.

Next, decide which roasting tin you are going to use for the turkey and line it with a doubled over piece of silver foil.  I added the bacon rind and parsley stalks to the tin, just to capitalise on any flavour that was going.  I always think it's a terrible shame to throw potential flavour in the bin!

Right, so now it's time to get up close and personal with this turkey.

Take a deep breath - this won't hurt a bit!

Turn it so that its neck end is towards you (that'll be the opposite end to the legs!) and pull the neck flap out from under the string that is trussing it.  You will probably need to trim off the majority of the length of this flap, in order to gain access to the breast meat under it.  This is where poultry shears come into their own!

What we're aiming to do, is to create a pocket between the skin and the breast meat.  You can do this by pushing your fingers through the membrane that connects the two - yes, I know it's gross but it's over quickly!  I found that my little fat fingers didn't reach far enough along the breast, so I used a blunt ended tablespoon and pushed that in as far as it would reach, bowl side up.  The object of the exercise, is not to pierce the skin at all - otherwise all your butter will run directly out as soon as it melts.

See?  Short fat fingers - no hope of reaching far enough!

Make a long pocket across the top of both breasts.  It is easiest to do them separately, as the skin is joined along the breastbone and trying to pierce it there is almost impossible to do without breaking the skin.

Once your pockets are done, divide your butter mix into two and squeeze one half into each pocket.  You'll find they arrive in one lump, but by smoothing with your thumb along the top of the skin, you'll find you can encourage the lump to thin out and before long you'll have both breasts looking all buttered up and lovely.  There's just one thing left to do, which is to take a cocktail stick and use it to "stitch" the neck hole shut.  This will stop the solids inside the flavoured butter from escaping.

A fine bit of cocktail stitchery!

Cut the remains of the orange in half and insert each half into the cavity.  The orange will provide lovely orange-scented and flavoured steam which will also keep the meat moist.

Tuck the remaining three sprigs of rosemary down the side of each leg - between the leg and the breast - and tuck one into the cavity, for luck. 

Almost looks attractive, now!

The next thing is to think about what you want on the skin of the turkey.  I gave the whole bird a good coating of rapeseed oil, as a little oil helps to brown the skin and keep it crispy.  By all means use olive oil, or peanut, or just plain vegetable oil - it really won't matter.

I then seasoned the bird with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and added a final flourish with a few pinches of Sumac.  Sumac has a fresh citrus flavour and would go very well with the orange, I felt.  You could easily add more herbs, or more spices - whatever will go with what you've used in the flavoured butter.

So there you have it!  One turkey, all ready for the oven.

The last thing to do before committing it to the heat, is to place a large piece of silver foil over the top - effectively sealing the turkey in - and crimp it closed all around the roasting tin.

You should have your oven pre-heated to 220degC/200degC(fan)/425degF/Gas 7 - yes, that hot! - so place your turkey in the middle of the oven for the next 30 minutes.

What your turkey should look like, once you uncover it!

Once 30 minutes are up, leaving the turkey undisturbed, simply turn the oven temperature down to 170degC/150degC(fan)/300degF/Gas 3 for another 2.5-3 hours.

I gave my turkey the full 3 hours, at the end of which you remove the turkey from the oven and remove its silver foil cover.  Baste the turkey with the cooking juices that will have accumulated in the pan (we tipped ours out into a jug and poured it over - it was a two man job, but worth doing!) and replace it - without the silver foil lid - for another 30 minutes at an increased temperature of 200degC/180degC(fan)/400degF/Gas 6 to gain that lovely golden colour.

See?  "Lovely golden colour" - I wasn't joking either!

At the end of the cooking time, remove the turkey from the oven and leave it to sit in the roasting tin for 15 minutes, to rest, covered with foil to help it keep warm.  During this time, the juices in the meat are allowed to redistribute themselves around the meat and it may well suck up some of the cooking liquid that is in the tin.

Turkey - meet platter.  Or should that be "turkey meat platter"?

Once the 15 minutes are up, decant the turkey from the tin onto a warmed platter.  Re-wrap it in its silver foil cape and leave it to rest for another 30 minutes.

By this time, it is quite right to feel as though you've been faffing around with this damned turkey ALL FLIPPING DAY!  Believe me, it is worth it though.

Just look at that and think of the admiration of your peers - this, too, could be yours

I saved the cooking juices from the roasting tin to use in the gravy making.  I just skimmed the fat off and popped it into the fridge until I needed it.  If you are serving your turkey immediately, then there's no need to do this - just use it how you like in the gravy.

Congratulations!  Your turkey is now ready to carve!

Roasted Kelly Bronze Turkey with all the trimmings

Yesterday (Sunday) was the big "roast the Turkey" day.

The full menu for the meal, looked like this :

Roasted Kelly Bronze Turkey

Pigs in blankets

Stuffing balls

Roasted Potatoes & Parsnips

Brussels Sprouts with bacon & chestnuts

Carrots en Vichy

Bread sauce

Turkey Gravy

with a nice Zinfandel served alongside.

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

Well, I can tell you that it was almost all absolutely divine - all except the stuffing balls, which were truly disgusting and got thrown into the bin.  However, I'll tell you all about those in just a while.

Let's talk Turkey, first.  I have, at this point, to remind you all that I am coming at this from the perspective of someone who has had to count every penny in order to get through the month.  Literally, every penny.  Some months, we were down to just 5p in the account - but at least the account was still in credit, which is more than can be said for a lot of accounts!  So, to be faced with a Kelly Bronze Turkey that was worth a completely staggering £73.95 ~gasp~ was almost more than hubby or I could bear.  You cannot imagine the sheer guilt involved in converting that much money's-worth of Turkey into meals.  That Turkey was worth more than a week's shopping has cost us, in the past.  It was just jaw-dropping.

Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it's a Kelly Bronze Turkey!

The only way to approach this process, we found, was to deal with it in two ways.  Firstly, consider it as "work".  We had been given these lovely ingredients by Knorr, to make into lovely meals, in return for blogging copiously about it.  Now the fact that I enjoy doing both those two things, just means that I'm lucky enough to have a "job" that I enjoy - and was going to particularly enjoy working with the Foreman & Field Seasonal Box.  Secondly, we felt compelled to take that Turkey as far as we possibly could push it.  Hence, we currently have on the list, the following : a roast "Christmas" dinner; a Turkey Leftover Curry; a Turkey pie; Turkey stock; a Turkey soup and several lunch incarnations of various leftovers.  Not to mention that the dogs will have enjoyed their fair share of the bounty, too - receiving various inedible bits and the giblets.  If we can take it any further, rest assured we will.

All ready for the oven, including 2 onions "up its jacksy", to quote Jamie Oliver

The Kelly Bronze came, most obligingly, with a booklet with gave full cooking instructions which helped no end.  Just how scared was I, of ruining this beautiful bird by overcooking it?  Yep, you've got it - pretty darned worried.  So I followed the instructions to the letter - roasting the bird "upside down" so that the fat could trickle through the breast meat and so keep it moist and roasting it for the prescribed 20 minutes in a very hot oven, then an hour in a medium oven.

I only wish that I could have bottled the smell of that Turkey cooking.  As hubby said, it took him back to Christmasses of yore, when his Granny would be doing the cooking and Turkeys were fresh as opposed to frozen and more than likely free range.  It sounds a bit of a tall tale, but it truly did smell totally different to a standard old supermarket turkey (the one that we're all, not surprisingly as it turns out, so bored with).

Hand me the carvers, Gloria, I'm going in!

What emerged from the oven was a gloriously golden, beautifully roasted, succulent and supremely tasty Turkey.  I have a terrible suspicion that we've now been spoiled for any other kind of Turkey - and are definitely not going to be spending £70+ on a Kelly Bronze, no matter how gorgeous it is - at Christmas.

Following on from a half-hour's resting time, I carved the Turkey and broke the quantity of meat down into individual meals, to make freezing the remainder easier.  I was - and indeed still am - just amazed at how much meat came off of that Turkey.  To say I was up to my elbows in it, wouldn't be far wrong.

The carcass immediately went into the slow cooker with an assortment of vegetables, to begin the process of making the stock - of which more in another blog post.

The portion of meat for the Roast Dinner went into a pyrex bowl, to have gravy added and be popped into the oven to warm through at dinner time.  So much easier than trying to juggle with roasties, vegetables, gravy AND the Turkey!  In any case, we wouldn't have had room in our oven for the Turkey and the roasties, so it was essential that I roast the bird beforehand.

The "Pigs in blankets" took the form of some Musks's Special Recipe Christmas Chipolatas, wound round with some of Emmett's Black Mild-Cured Streaky Bacon, which we also used for the Brussels Sprouts and the last of which I shall use in the Turkey pie.  At around £4.50 for a 250g pack, the bacon is something else I'll be determined to make the most of!  It was a shame that the chipolatas had been previously frozen, as that has made utilising the leftovers a bit short on timescale, as we obviously can't freeze them again.  They're going to form part of my lunch today, I think.

I liked the chipolatas and son & heir seemed to approve too, but hubby wasn't so keen.  They were an interesting mix of Pork (50%), Bread (wheat flour, water, yeast, salt), Rusk (wheat flour, salt) Cranberries, Chestnut Puree (chestnuts, water, sugar, salt), Dehydrated Onion, Demerara Sugar, Spices, Sage, Orange & Lemon Peel, and Salt.  As a "pig in blanket", the chipolatas were completely overawed by the quality of the superb bacon, but he found them to be too "mealy" and a bit lacking in flavour.  A shame, as they retail at around £3.75 for a pack of 10, which is a wee bit pricey - but then, Musk's do carry a Royal Warrant, which has got to be worth at least 50p on the price.

The bacon though.  Oh, the bacon!  Emmett's have been providing Suffolk ham and bacon since 1820 and also have received a Royal Warrant.  However, the difference is that here you can taste the years in the cure of the bacon.  In fact, just open the bag and inhale - there's a whole lot of history involved in that sweet smokiness.  The depth and layers of fragrance just don't arrive because someone has had a good idea about what to cure the bacon with - they come through years of practice.

The smell of that bacon cooking to accompany the brussels sprouts, dominated the kitchen in the most mouth-watering way possible. Closely followed by the Pigs in blankets sizzling away in the oven, the place took on a very satisfactorily bacony character.  However, the true worth of the bacon is the fact that the flavour is even better than the smell.  I reckon that the Turkey was the star of the show - but the bacon was a very close second.

Even the dogs enjoyed the bacon, as I popped the trimmed bacon rind into the oven to bake - and the dogs had that with their tea.  Everyone ate every scrap that was in their bowl, so I think it's safe to say they approved - which I'm sure you are significantly reassured by.  *chuckle*

I wish it were possible to speak in such glowing terms as regards the "Finest Quality Cranberry Walnut & Smoked Bacon stuffing" from Foreman & Field.  As it states on the pack lid, the stuffing has been previously frozen - which wouldn't be a problem, as in my experience, stuffing balls don't tend to hang around waiting to be eaten!  However, it was a big problem in this instance, because as I was forming the stuffing into balls, it was necessary to squeeze the water from the mix.  Gross, or what?  Not a good start - and the situation didn't improve, as the cooked stuffing tasted stale and old.  You know that "old rancid fat" taste that cheap, cheap sausages have?  No?  Well, think yourself lucky then.  This stuffing was on the verge of decomposition, I reckon.

The vegetables that were included in the box (parsnips, carrots, brussels sprouts) were all lovely quality, fresh and tasty.  Something amazing happened with regard to the Brussels Sprouts with bacon & chestnuts, mind you!  Hubby - that self-confessed disliker of all things Brussels Sprouty - ate three of them!  All of which might go some way towards giving you an understanding of how truly gorgeous the bacon was, alongside some beautifully soft, sweet chestnuts.  I'll be using the remainder of the chestnuts in the pastry for the Turkey pie, I think.

Cheers!

The Carrots en Vichy were simplicity itself to make and I think we'll be re-visiting this recipe again, very soon.

You simply prepare the amount of carrots you need, by peeling, then slicing them lengthways.  Place them into a saucepan and just cover with water (Vichy water, if you want to be precise - but we used simple tap water).  Add a teaspoon of sugar and a large knob of butter, bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and allow the water to cook away until you're left with cooked, glazed carrots.  Gorgeous!

The Turkey gravy was another revelation, as it caused son & heir to abandon his love for dry food in favour of a plate swimming in gorgeous Turkey gravy.  I made the gravy with the Turkey Stock, supported by one of the Knorr Stock Pots to just boost the intensity of the flavours.  I had been able to skim all the fat from the stock, but will have to admit to starting with a butter/flour roux when making the gravy, so it wasn't low fat at all.  What it was, however, was completely gorgeous and more like a Turkey soup than gravy!

Again, I have to thank Knorr for the opportunity of cooking this feast, but most of all, I have to thank hubby for the hours he has put in over the weekend, peeling, chopping, calculating timings, getting things out of and into the oven, watching over boiling pots, laying tables, taking photographs and just doing all the legwork.  I honestly couldn't have done it without him, so he deserves most of the credit for the production of both this meal and the Christmas Buffet.  Thanks, darring!

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