How to bake a turkey. Instructions

Two (complex!) Recipe for any holiday - at least for a family dinner, at least for the New Year

On November 23, the United States celebrated thanksgiving - a holiday that many people know about exactly: on this day it is customary to eat turkey. The turkey meat is considered not the most sophisticated, but a whole carcass - thanks to the filling and sauces - can be turned into a more than delicious and spectacular dish that can be cooked for Christmas, New Year or for any home holiday. True, you have to tinker. Gastronomic journalist Victoria Boyarskaya talks about two difficult recipe for a festive turkey that cost him.

Get together with the spirit

The middle carcass of turkey weighs about 7-8 kilograms. If you have never baked it entirely before, then you should understand that this bird is really big. She will have to mess with her for a long time: even if you decide not to soak the turkey in a salt solution, you will need to prepare the filling, stuff the carcass, and then the bake for many hours in a row. When buying a bird, evaluate its size and make sure that it will fit into the oven (it can be difficult to place a carcass weighing more than 7 kilograms in an ordinary household electric oven, so it’s better to look for the most miniature turkey).

Select the filling

The cavity inside the turkey is also quite large, so a lot of fillings will be needed. We propose to choose from two options: classic apple or piquant filling from giblets with Chorizo. In any case, it is important to completely cook the filling before placing it inside the carcass. You should not put raw foods in the turkey: during baking, the filling will begin to warm up in the last turn, so bake the filling inside the bird, without drying the meat, will not work.

Hold the turkey in the brine

Soaring in salt solution will help solve two problems at once: firstly, it will significantly increase the juiciness of meat and make the texture of different parts of the carcass more uniform. In addition, this is a great way to saturate the turkey pulp with the aroma of seasonings and achieve optimal salinity. The only difficulty is that in order to soak the bird, you will need a very large pan, a plastic container or a deep pelvis, a lot of space in the refrigerator, as well as additional time.

You will need: the turkey carcass is entirely (the recipe is designed for a small turkey weighing up to 7 kilograms), 6 liters of water, a bottle of white dry wine, 400 grams of salt, 6 laurel leaves, 2 tablespoons of black pepper, 2 tablespoons of corner grains, a teaspoon A spoonful of Fennel seeds.

How to cook: connect all the dry components and pour them with water and white wine. Mix thoroughly so that the salt dissolves. Put the carcass in the brine and press on top with the load, if necessary. Cover with a lid and take it into the refrigerator (you can take out the bird for the night on the balcony or put it out into the street). Keep the bird in a cold brine for a day.

After soaking, put the turkey on several layers of kitchen towels and let the liquid drain. Glue the surface thoroughly from the outside and from the inside, trying not to damage the skin. In a correctly gutted bird in the neck and lower part of the abdomen, free pieces of the skin should be preserved - do not cut them, they will come in handy to close the holes and “pack” the filling inside. Leave the carcass to dry on the towels at room temperature and make cooking the filling.

Classic filling of apples with a cut

You will need : two chiabattas weighing about 200 grams; 150 grams of butter; 2 stems of onion-fraud (only white parts will be needed), 4 sweet and sour red apples; 1 teaspoon of dried rosemary (or one fresh twig), 200 milliliters of a dry cider, 1 egg, ½ teaspoon of salt, a pinch of ground black pepper.

How to cook: cut chiabatta with cubes one and a half centimeters. Put in a bowl.

Heat the oven to 180 ° C. Melt 100 grams of butter and evenly sprinkle the bread to them, mix. Put the cubes on a baking sheet covered with parchment and put in the upper part of the oven for 10 minutes so that the bread dries and becomes a pleasant caramel color. In the middle of the preparation, you can get it and slightly shake the baking sheet to turn the bread cubes.

Cut the white parts of the stems of the pile along, and then thinly chop in half rings. Clean the apples from the peel, remove the core. Cut into small cubes. Melt the remaining butter in a large pan and put the onion there. Fry for five minutes, stirring. Add apples and cook all together for another five minutes.

In a large bowl, connect the fried breaks of apples, bread crackers, dried rosemary (if you use fresh, cut the leaves from the stem and chop them), salt and pepper. Add cord and egg. Mix the mass to complete uniformity.

Put on a baking sheet, smooth out the mass with a spoon and bake for 35 minutes.

Give the finished filling to cool to room temperature.

Piquant filling of giblets with Chorizo

You will need: 400 grams of minced meat from a mixture of pork and beef; 500 grams of chicken liver; 100 grams of sausage chorizo; one onion (it is better to take more); 3 stems of celery; 1 thick corn cake or bread made of corn flour (one piece weighing about 300 grams); 3-4 branches of sage; 3 eggs; 100 milliliters of chicken broth (can be replaced with water); 100 milliliters of red dry wine; Salt, black pepper - to taste; ¼ teaspoon of Kayen pepper; 50-70 milliliters of olive oil; 30 grams of butter.

How to cook: heat the oven to 180 ° C. Torn the corn tortilla with your hands into small pieces (about the size of a phalanx of the thumb). Put on a baking sheet and dry in the oven for 10-15 minutes. When the crackers are ready, take them out, but do not turn off the oven.

Meanwhile, cut the liver in small pieces. Take a medium -sized pan and warm a couple of spoons of olive oil in it with butter. Put the liver in the pan and fry for three minutes on very strong heat. Pour in red wine and mix intensively, continuing to cook for another five minutes so that alcohol evaporates. Remove the pan from the fire.

Cut the onions and celery in small cubes. Warm up in another, large pan a little more olive oil, lay out the vegetables and fry five to seven minutes until golden.

Meanwhile, finely chop chorizo ​​sausage. Transfer onions and celery from the pan, add oils to it, wait until it warms up and lay the minced meat. Fry it until evenly brown. Return the vegetables to the pan, add Chorizo ​​and mix thoroughly without removing from heat. Cook all together for another three minutes. Remove the mass from the fire.

Add to the pan dried pieces of corn cakes, finely chopped sage leaves, chicken broth and the liver fierce with wine. Mix the mass. Salt and pepper to your taste, season with a sharp Kayen pepper. Add eggs carefully and thoroughly mix the filling thoroughly until complete uniform. If the pan is suitable for the oven, you can send the filling to be baked directly in it; If not, put the mixture on a baking sheet, smooth out with a spoon and bake for 20 minutes. Let cool to room temperature.

Flagging the bird and prepare it for baking

You will need: 300 milliliters of white dry wine, 300 milliliters of chicken or vegetable broth; 300 grams of butter; a large piece of clean culinary gauze or waffle towel; deep baking sheet; Culinary thread, needle for stitching or toothpicks.

How to cook: when the filling cools to room temperature, fill it with a turkey abdomen. It is better to use two tablespoons and lay out the filling on both sides, in the holes from the side of the neck and on the bottom of the abdomen. Close holes with free pieces of skin and jam them with toothpicks or sew a culinary thread to the turret of the turkey. Place the bird in the deepest baking sheet for baking up, turning the wings under the carcass (so they will not burn ahead of time). Standing your legs with a culinary thread, pulling them to each other. The most successful option for the location of the bird inside the oven is the legs to its posterior wall.

Heat the oven to 200 degrees.

Combine white wine, melted butter and chicken broth in a deep bowl, mix with a fork, put gauze there. Squeeze slightly so that the liquid does not flow from the tissue, and cover the turkey on top, evenly straightening the tissue.

Calculate the baking time and send the bird to the oven

To accurately determine the readiness, it is best to use a culinary thermometer-squeeze. But first, still calculate the approximate preparation time according to the formula: 120 minutes + 30 minutes*n, where n is the initial weight of the carcass in kilograms. For example, if the weight of your turkey at the beginning of cooking (before soaking in brine) was 6 kilograms, then the calculated cooking time will be 300 minutes, that is, exactly five hours.

Regardless of the weight of the bird, the following actions must be done all the time:

In the first two and a half hours, lubricate or water gauze with a mixture of wine, broth and oil every 30 minutes. Marilya will gradually get dark and after two and a half hours will be brown. Remove it from the surface of the bird and further bake it without gauze, continuing to moisturize with wine, broth and oil every half an hour.

About four hours later from the start of cooking, stick the turkey thermometer in its fleshy part in its fleshy part, directing the tip to the center of the carcass. When the thermometer shows that the temperature inside the carcass reached 75 ° C, the turkey is ready. You can get it from the oven!

Cover the baking sheet with several layers of thick foil, put a couple of kitchen towels on top and leave the turkey for at least half an hour before serving.

During cooking, a juice arising from a bird will accumulate in a baking sheet. Wind him with a ladle so that he does not spill, and be sure to save. It will come in handy for sauce.

Prepare two simple sauces

For the sauce of Gravi from meat juice, you will need : 50 grams of butter; 1 tablespoon of flour; 500 milliliters of juice leaked from a turkey during baking, or chicken broth; 100 milliliters of cream with fat content of 20%.

Put the butter in the stewpan and melt it over medium heat. Add flour, fry it until light beige. Pour in meat juice and quickly mix the sauce with a whisk. Bring the mass to a boil so that it thickens, without stopping stirring. Add cream, mix and remove from heat.

For red berry sauce, you will need : 1 cup of frozen cranberries; A cup of frozen cherry without bones; 1 stick of cinnamon; 2 anise stars; 3 dried cloves; 1 half lemon; 3 tablespoons of sugar.

Put the berries in the stewpan, add lemon juice, sugar and spices. Pour 100 milliliters of water. Bring the mass to a boil and cook for 10 minutes over low heat. Remove the cinnamon stick, anise stars. Grind the mass with a submersible blender and wipe through a sieve.

Victoria Boyarskaya