Background to Roast Turkey
The Site Description that led you here shouts out that major events provide a plethora of opportunities for us to add meaning to our lives. This piece illustrates that we can find these opportunities even in our daily lives.
I’m writing this sitting on my window ledge thirty-one floors above the ground, gazing out at the Blue Hills to the south, ethereal in the early morning haze. It’s 5.45am and, writing paper in hand, Surface tablet on my lap, and hot coffee on the side table in arm’s reach, I’m planning my meals for the coming week. Turkey dominates my thoughts – I love turkey and it’s been a while.
How did I come to preparing time-consuming dinners for myself and daughter?
Years ago when I became a single father I made a life-altering decision, a superordinate decision, that no matter the struggle, my daughter and I would live civilized lives.
Civilized, as in bringing a place or people to a stage of social, cultural, and moral development considered more advanced.
As in the synonyms: enlightening, edifying, improving, educating, refining.
Of course, a host of consequent requirements, corollaries, attach to profound decisions -- making the one we must accept the corollaries.
In the case of aspiring to civilized, I accepted the importance of a wine-paired, daily ceremonial dinner.
Inevitably and invariably the source of that daily dinner, I accepted the role of a domestic cook.
And turkey? During the after-dinner hours of last Thanksgiving’s (2017) sixteen-day auto-trip to New Orleans, I made some major changes to my roasting style and I’ve been dying to try out the amended recipe. That and my sudden desire for a turkey dinner brings us here.
Thinking now of the details, those individual, indivisible steps needed to execute the corollary requirement of a civilized meal for the civilized family.
Reflecting on the importance of joyfully accepting chopping celery or weighing chestnuts.
Thinking of the Shakers, those extraordinary people becoming extraordinary by their faithful execution of details, without regard to the level of energy or the amount of time.
Faithful execution of details, integral also to the Existential Catechism.
Understanding the importance of the details dooms us to success, even if the turkey turns out a tad dry, or the dinner conversation less than amiable.
And we can do more than the faithful execution of the mechanics.
Suppose that during the cook we deliberately make another human being feel better about herself; or we successfully defuse a moment of anger; or squelch a touch of frustration.
And, yea! Suppose we should sing while we work, (imagine!) then at day’s end, as we slide into bed, we may permit ourselves a small smile for a spiritually meaningful day.
Welcome to the existential world of Roast Turkey, Stuffing, and Gravy where only after we remind ourselves of the importance of the details do we turn our attention to the first of them, the calendar and daily to-do lists that smooth the multi-faceted turkey cook.
I have two calendar ideas to share that will sidestep some stress.
One, for the three nights leading up to the turkey dinner, let’s schedule easy to prepare meals, like eating out, buying prepared dinners, or preparing simple meals like Seared/Slow Roasted Steaks or Chicken Breast Piccata, the meats served with market-prepared vegetables.
We'll husband our kitchen time for the turkey.
The second idea, let’s not carve in stone the day planned for the turkey dinner until we plunk the turkey on our kitchen counter.
Because from the time we talk with the meat department regarding the expected arrival of the turkey to when we get the bird home, a number of events may occur to frustrate our intentions. Like the promised delivery from the producer or wholesaler to the market may go awry. Like a change in our own schedule may make it difficult to get to the market as planned.
Random. A meat thermometer belongs in every kitchen, preferably one with a big screen that makes it easy to read when we bend over to the dimly-lit oven shelf.
Supermarkets carry frozen generic turkey year-round. But if we prefer a tastier, more texturally appealing, and/or a more healthful bird boasting badges like ‘organic,’ ‘free-ranging,’ ‘no antibiotics,’ ‘all vegetarian diet,’ and ‘fresh,’ (each descriptor driving the price well above the supermarket price of its generic frozen turkey) we’ll have to search out specialty markets and order the turkey in advance.
A heads-up. Talking to the staff at meat departments provides an opportunity to both educate ourselves and to allow a human being to display her knowledge to someone respectful of her craft. A nice touch – go for it.
Details, the importance of.
The recipe calls for stock.
Dedicated to our craft, we make our own stock.
I’ve never tasted a canned stock that I would enjoy as a light lunch.
And if we don’t like the stand-alone taste of the stock, what’s the point of using it in the recipe? It's not delicious alone; it won't be as a component.
Canned stock does save both time and money but at great cost, including both a reduced deliciousness and denying ourselves that slide-into-bed-smile of a day of spiritual enrichment.
Separately, for both health and culinary reasons never add salt to stock.
Efficiency. We arrive home and set our shopping on the counter. As we unpack, we put the turkey parts we bought for the stock directly into the stockpot. Add the celery, carrots, and onion, cover the lot with water, no salt, and simmer for hours, even overnight. Voila! The stock cooks. The kitchen smells of good things to come and we have jump started the cooking.
Random. The markets that sell the quality bird we want for the roast are usually not the same markets that sell turkey parts.
After some experimenting, I’ve concluded that wet-brining the turkey does indeed produce a juicier bird and, although not critical to the quality of the cook, it does have a small impact and I’d recommend using it.
But skip it if discourages you.
Efficiency II. Still unpacking the groceries, take the roasting turkey directly from the shopping bag and put it directly into the wet-brine, the wet brine into the refrigerator.
So, within the flow of the unpacking, we’ve begun two of the most time-consuming recipe steps: the stock is infusing the kitchen with delicious promises of good things to come, and the wet-brine clock has started.
Are we there yet? Feeling enriched? We should be.
Slow-roasting, cooking at a greatly reduced oven-temperature, (we use 200*,) produces the juiciest meats. It’s true.
Subjecting the bird to high heat over a long-term forces too much of the juice from the turkey.
However, the slow-roast’s low temperature fails to produce an attractively browned turkey.
Exception. Very large turkeys, say eighteen pounds, stay in the oven for so long that they will indeed brown, even with the low oven temperature.
To produce color, our recipe calls for workarounds, dry-brining being the first of them.
Not a big deal.
We’re talking five-minutes of our time, although the bird spends several hours in the refrigerator.
In our five-minutes, we make a slurry of water, salt, and baking powder and paint the bird with it.
Uncovered, the slurry-painted bird goes into refrigerator for at least eight hours during which the slurry water and the bird’s own moisture dry leaving the baking powder and the salt to dehydrate the skin and break down the bird’s exterior, making the bird more susceptible to color.
Note that, like the wet-brine, this step is not critical to the result.
Like the wet-brine, skip it if the recipe feels too complicated.
For the cooking, choose a pan that can be used to both sear and roast the turkey; large enough to hold a poultry rack and small enough to fit into the oven.
Searing the turkey flavors the cooking fat which will aid the gravy.
Plus, pieces of the turkey caramelize and stick to the pan.
We'll scrape those into the juices of the roasting pan to be used later.
We need all these flavors to build an amazing gravy.
Because slow-roasting does not force the turkey flavors from the turkey into the roasting pan, there aren't enough juices in the pan at the end of the roast to form the foundation of a traditional turkey gravy.
We'll make ours as a separate step, not while we're in the middle of taking care of the turkey.
That's why we buy extra turkey parts and make a stock.
Then comes the gravy.
I can hardly wait.
Now comes the crux of the cook: when do we declare the turkey done?
Serving a safe-to-eat turkey at its gastronomic peak is a tricky business.
Tricky because the thigh’s large joint jig-saws into the turkey carcass and clasps the thick thigh hard against the carcass, sealing that connecting joint, that inner sanctum, against the heat.
Unless we adopt the common solution and cook the crap out of the turkey, that piece will resist the roasting.
So the conundrum: Do we overcook the entire bird just to ensure we fully cook that very small part of the turkey that seems to defy the cook?
The recipe clearly provides the answer.
Be assured that with the times, temperatures, and techniques laid out therein we will get our turkey as close to perfect as possible, first time, every time.
‘Close to perfect’ the salient phrase.
Because whereas most recipes build in an overcook, we go opposite.
When the thigh or the breast records that according to our recommended temperatures the turkey is finished, we pull the bird.
If it happens that during the carving that we find that small joint area underdone, we suck it up.
We set it aside and continue carving.
The perfectly cooked turkey will go around twice and still provide leftovers.
We’ll deal with that dastardly thigh joint por la manana.
Speaking of the carving, will we carve the turkey at the table in full view of our guests?
Will we mind looking less smooth and clever than we might like?
Will the sight of our hungry family and guests holding tightly to their plates unnerve us?
Will we mind if our guests witness our clumsy work around that undercooked thigh joint?
Or will we surrender that great ceremonial moment and, sometime prior to dinnertime, chop, shear, and slice the bird in the kitchen, and then, still warm from waiting in the oven, carry out the artfully arranged turkey platter into the dining room?
For myself, after all that work, I’d rather look inept at the table where I am still eligible for accolades and where I can participate in the social intercourse.
Random. One of the geniuses of turkey is that it produces a lot of meals.
Health alert: We should treat salt as a necessary evil and use it sparingly in our cooking. The recipes in this blog either omit salt or use it sparingly.