An Easier Roast Turkey (That Uses a Tool for Pizza) and The Best Way to Boil Corn (Don't Boil!)

[Music] today on america's test kitchen dan shows julia a game-changing roast turkey recipe lisa reviews oven thermometers bridget and julia share clever thanksgiving shortcuts and becky uncovers the secrets to foolproof boiled corn it's all coming up right here on america's test kitchen here in the test kitchen we come up with a new tricky recipe every year every dish we develop goes through our rigorous testing process and turkeys are no exception now the average turkey recipe takes around 50 birds for us to perfect so we did the math with 26 recipes under our belt that means well over 1300 turkeys have flown through this kitchen and the big question we always get asked is what do you do with all those leftovers well we eat them our friends eat them our friends kids eat them our kids friends teachers eat them and so on since we work roughly half a year ahead of time springtime is turkey time here in the test kitchen so without further ado we'd like to introduce you to our newest turkey of the year hey [Music] there are many ways to roast a turkey but you often have to give up convenience in order to have it all that gorgeous norman rockwell looking turkey with perfectly cooked white and dark meat and a killer gravy but could we have both convenience and perfection i say yes all right but we have to get there so we're starting with a 12 pound turkey and if you look at a turkey it's a terrible shape for roasting yeah it's really lumpy right it's lumpy all the meat that dries out really quickly is on top all the dark meat which can go for longer is on the bottom so a lot of times we end up flipping going back and forth breaking it down we didn't want to do any of that we want to keep this as simple as possible no flipping the bird i agree with not flipping the board as much as you possibly can especially on thanksgiving so we're going to start with first removing the giblets and the neck which are inside here so we're going to save these and actually use these later in the gravy so we don't want to ditch them we're glad they're in here but we want them out of the turkey for the roasting i have four tablespoons of kosher salt here and four teaspoons of sugar we're going to actually salt this bird now the salt does a lot of things it seasons it also moves into the muscle fibers and helps them retain moisture makes them look more tender sugar does a lot of those same things a little bit less effectively but it also adds some sweetness which we like and we're going to put it on the turkey but it needs to go under the skin which means i'm going to separate the skin from the meat a little turkey glove turkey glove yes let's just go in kind of knock out that membrane so i do this side with my right hand but then when i want to do this leg i go in with my left and that way i can kind of move this back and forth so you like a turkey glove on both hands i do yes so in addition to allowing us to get the salt and sugar right on the meat this also makes a little air pocket right and that means that we can get more fat draining out and we can get this crisper as well and i also like to actually go around on this side here and separate a little bit on this side so it's a full body massage full of butters okay that's great and while i'm over here i'll start here we're looking to get about four teaspoons under each breast and two teaspoons on each leg even distribution is what we're looking for we developed this recipe using diamond crystal kosher salt which measures slightly different than other brands of kosher salt so if you're using a different brand you can go to our website for more information so for the rest of this we're going to go inside the cavity we're going to need to put this in the fridge for 24 to 48 hours before i do that i'm going to trust the legs and i like to kind of go through and under there's probably some sailor's knot here going on that i don't know about so the last thing i'm going to do is tuck these wings back they're a little bit more resilient than on a chicken so you got to use a little bit more muscle on them beautiful oh that's shaping up shaping up all right so let's go over onto here and we're gonna put this in the fridge uncovered so we get extra dehydration on the outside which leads to better browning so this turkey's been on vacation it's just been hanging out in the fridge for about 48 hours the skin almost looks like leather it's so dried out really dry that's a good thing that's a good thing i know it doesn't look great right now but i can see in the future and i know this is gonna be good so what i'm gonna do is just kind of pat any remaining moisture on there and we should be pretty dry at this point all right great so now we're gonna make a little paste that's gonna go on the exterior of the bird to help with browning so i've got one teaspoon of baking powder here and one and a half teaspoons of oil we're gonna mix this together well that's a weird paste it is a weird paste right so we really need good browning because what we're actually gonna do is shield the breast for part of the cooking time and it's not gonna brown very well during that time okay so i'm just gonna paint this on we're gonna go all over but it's really important for the breast so i know we very often use baking soda to help both meat and poultry brown but we've never used baking powder so why the difference here we actually have used it in a very old recipe for a crisp roast chicken and what it does is it acts in a similar way to soda it's not as alkaline but you still get more browning because the ph is a little bit higher it's also a salt so it's going to help draw more moisture out and that's always a good thing in the oven okay so that's good for the breast there we're actually going to make our shield now the shield a little bit of arts and crafts going on here so we're just going to make a foil shield that's roughly the same shape as the crown here now as i mentioned before turkeys are a horrible shape for cooking right and all this meat really wants to dry out rapidly so what we're going to do is make this nice i thought you're gonna make a paper airplane you thought it was gonna put my head it does it is a little bit like a paper airplane so what we're gonna do is make this nice little shield here so this might look a little silly but this is saving us from having to flip the turkey part way through now about 30 minutes ago i put a baking stone in the oven we're not making pizza it's actually the key to making this recipe work what we're basically doing is creating this huge heat sink in the oven so we have the beaking stone in there we have a roasting pan on top of it and the whole setup has preheated for 30 minutes at 500 degrees so it's very very hot when we put the turkey in right into the roasting pan the dark meat is down so it's going to get a lot more heat we've also shielded this so it's extremely protected so in the end they come at the same time i gotcha so preheated baking pan and a shield on the breast means you speed up the dark meat and slow down the white meat exactly i'm with you all right and i have two tablespoons of oil so we're gonna put that in the bottom of the pan oh you can tell by how hot the pan is by that oil it immediately just started to shimmer oh yeah it's almost smoking very very hot so now i'm just going to move these so i don't brush them with the turkey here pick up the bird right in can you hear that super loud so we're gonna go back into the oven we're gonna drop it down to 425 degrees and go for 45 minutes now that we've given the dark meat a really good jump start we're going to drop the oven temperature down to 325 degrees remove that foil shield and go until the breast register 165 degrees and the thighs and legs are at 175 [Music] we're gonna set the record straight on which thanksgiving shortcuts work and which do not so that you can get that big meal on the table without breaking a sweat gravy in a jar also known as the best way to ruin your turkey we tested the options at the supermarket and our advice is stay away we scoured the supermarket to find great pre-made dinner rolls and we found them pepperidge farms stone-baked artisan french generals they're fully cooked at the factory in a stone oven and they have a pleasantly weedy crispy and chewy taste now one of these is a lifesaver and the other one it's going to sink the ship frozen peas are more convenient and they often taste better than fresh but make the mistake of using frozen green beans in your casserole and you're going to end up with mush now canned pumpkin was a bit of a revelation we actually found two brands that we liked better than fresh pumpkin libby's canned pumpkin and one pie canned pumpkin both brands offer plain spiced and sweetened versions buy the plain pumpkin and season it yourself and after we tested eight of the leading brands of stuffing in a box well we decided it's best to steer clear of the stuff with just a little extra work you can make stuffing from scratch that's going to turn out a whole lot better find our recipe for homemade stuffing along with more of our thanksgiving tips on our website americastestkitchen.com [Music] so it's been 90 minutes and it definitely looks good and smells good yeah that bird's a looker i know it looks nice right so let's go into the breasts we're looking for 165 and we got it nice that's good and we'll check on the dark meat great we're done well done excellent perfectly done not well done right so i'm gonna grab it out if you wouldn't mind shutting that you bet oh beautiful all right so we're gonna transfer this over to our carving board here i love watching people do this everyone has their own way and you got so you have tongs and a wooden spoon yes i'm doing mostly lifting with my tongs and i like to just tip it let those juices run out because we can use those all right pop it over here that is a norman rockwell bird right there looks good right yeah that's a good looking one we didn't have to break it down or anything so this is gonna sit and rest for at least 45 minutes sounds like a long time but there's a lot of heat trapped in here right and so if we cut into it too soon a lot of that juice is going to come running out so 45 minutes you can even go up to an hour so it gives you time to do other stuff which we're going to do and i worried that the drippings were going to burn in that preheated pan on that hot baking stove but they're gorgeous that's going to make some good gravy yeah so what we're going to do first is strain it through this fine mesh strainer here i'm going to use a spatula and just kind of scrape around make sure everything's loosened up that's good flavor right there oh it smells good too smells like the holidays in here it does all right so first we're going to pass right through this fine mesh strainer this way if there's any bits of skin we get rid of that now for lump free gravy lump free gravy yes in many ways okay so the next up is we're going to put it into a fat separator there's plenty of rendered fat in here we're going to want to use some of it but not all of it great so we're going to let this sit for about 10 minutes make sure it really fully separates out and then it's time to make the gravy sounds good so our turkey is still resting over there staying nice and warm so we're going to turn our focus onto the gravy almost as important as the turkey to make arguably right we're going to start with the liquid that we took out of the pan and now it's separated out into nice liquid underneath so that's what we want to capture this is kind of a cool funky fat separator so you just hit this little lever and you get what was on the bottom so the juices the diff added juices are on the bottom and the fat has risen to the top exactly so you can kind of just go until you see it change over great there we go nice so that's our juices and then i'm going to head right over this pan here we're going to use three tablespoons of this fat for our gravy and that's some flavorful fats that's gonna lead to a really nice gravy i'm gonna set this aside i'm gonna heat this over medium high heat and now we finally come back to our neck and our giblets so i'm glad we saved those they're gonna provide a lot of flavor okay that's nice and hot we'll get our giblets to get nice and brown okay these are nice and brown all over got some good fond on there these are gonna go back in once we get all our liquid in there so they'll infuse a bit more we'll take them out for now we're going to drop this down to medium now we're going to go in with our aromatics i have a small onion that we got minced up here one small carrot that's sliced thin so we get lots of flavor out of it also five sprigs of parsley and two bay leaves okay so we're gonna cook this until everything is nice and soft in about five to seven minutes mmm that's starting to smell like gravy yeah they're just getting kind of nice and melted they're gonna blend right into the gravy so next we're gonna go in with our flour we're gonna do a traditional roux stir this around until all that flour is coated in fat okay that looks great now we're going to add in our drippings nice and dark tons of flavor that's the liquid gold right there that's the liquid gold so the trick to adding this in we want to go really slowly some seriously meaty drippings never tell you about the first time my daughter tried gravy no well my daughter's quite young and so she wasn't really into sauces when she was little so we always put in a little ramekin off to the side and gravy's kind of dark and scary looking but she took one bite and her face lit up she threw her hands over the air and she said winner that's great okay so that's pretty well mixed in there it's easier to make sure that you get all the flour with less liquid in there if you fill it up all the way then you're trying to find all those little bits and clips okay so now i'm going to go in with three and a quarter cups of water and i'm going to thin out that really thick paste with this and again a little slow here it really pays off all right once it's smooth and going a little faster there get the rest in and finally we're going to go with a quarter cup of white wine okay so our giblets are going to go back in now we've got our liquid in there and that's going to add serious flavor to the gravy seriously but it's gonna be great we're gonna bring this up to a simmer and we're gonna go for about 10 minutes we'll see it thicken a lot it's going to reduce a little bit during that time too so concentrate a bit more too sounds good how's it smell winter winter all right so that's been 10 minutes i'm going to turn off the heat and give a quick taste here so those drippings were pretty salty and that's why we used water instead of store-bought broth so here you really want to taste before you season salt's good give me a little bit of pepper so now i'm going to remove the neck and then we're going to pass it through the strainer now this can be your serving bowl and go right from here to the table and because there's lots of good flavor and all this stuff we're going to kind of push it through a little bit with our spatula make sure we get everything out pretty lump free yeah it looks very silky very silky sorry i'll take that for you i'll take i got it i can't have that that's not soup julia all right great so now it is time to carve the bird i'm gonna start with the dark meat here and i'm gonna cut the skin right down the side it's pretty crispy actually okay so i'm going down here onto the thigh and i just make small little cuts until i see that bone pop out right there right go right in around that and that will come out right for you so transfer this over here and i find it's easiest to go in and exercise the meat a little bit off of the wishbone first and then i start up on the breast here use that whole blade and be nice and close to this breastbone but you can start peeling it back you can do a little peel like that opens it up so you can see right in peel it back right in there well done i hate skimpy little slices of turkey where you get none of the skin oh yeah so i like leaving them a little bit thicker like this are you all white or dark or both yes yes okay very good answer nice piece of breast there a couple pieces of thigh oh that looks good all right a little gravy for you yes please [Music] good it's awesome the meat is really nicely seasoned it's juicy it's not that dried out old turkey that you sometimes get it's classic right classic flavor dan this turkey is awesome and the gravy winner not too bad right winner for the most foolproof thanksgiving turkey recipe rub sugar and salt underneath the skin and refrigerate the turkey uncovered for a day or two before roasting our secret to even cooking is heating up pizza stone on the lowest oven rack and covering the top of the turkey with foil finally simmer all of those flavorful drippings with the turkey neck some giblets and a little wine to make a killer gravy and there you have it from the test kitchen to your kitchen a bulletproof recipe for roast turkey [Music] for reliable results with recipes you need a good oven thermometer we found home ovens can be inaccurate by as much as 50 degrees your oven has an internal temperature gauge but it only reads the zone where it's installed which is usually in a really out of the way spot in the back or the side of the oven box it's not necessarily measuring the middle of the oven where you're cooking so we tested 10 thermometers under 20. now first we checked their accuracy we put four of each model in the oven at 250 350 and 450 degrees with a lab grade thermocouple as a benchmark with three brands some of the models actually failed showing temperatures that were 10 to 25 degrees off the real oven temperature we opened them up and they all worked pretty much the same so we really looked at how easy they were to use or not i mean look at this every time you pick it up other ones just could not clip on the racks of five different brands of ovens we tested and then most important of all could we read them we looked with the oven door open and closed and from different angles and some of them had an overhang on their faces that totally blocked our view of important numbers or they were so busy they were impossible to read our winner passed all the tests it's accurate it has large temperature markings a simple streamlined face and a nice wide base that sits securely on all types of oven racks without all that fiddling and fussing it's called the cdn pro accurate thermometer and it costs just under nine dollars but one last thing you don't need to leave your oven thermometer in the oven all the time you can use it to calibrate your oven every few months just put it right in the center of the oven turn the oven on and then check when it's fully preheated then it matches the temperature you set on the oven you're going to learn if your oven runs hot or cool and then you can adjust the dial accordingly you'll always get better cooking results when you know your oven you might think why do i need a recipe for boiled corn but i get calls and texts all summer long from friends wanting to know what the correct boiling time is turns out the answer to perfectly boiled corn is not boiling the corn at all and we also discovered an easy way to time it with the rest of your dinner oh that's crucial because when you boil corn the time is kind of hard and you want to time it with the other things you got going on you don't have to worry anymore so i have to ask how many ears of corn did it take us to figure out how to boil corn the right way oh hundreds and hundreds i mean we had bushels of corn show me how it's done so we'll start off we'll shuck a little bit of corn all right is there a special shucking technique because after bushels we must have figured something out just get in there and do it all right just you know be aggressive so we're gonna take our six ears of corn and i have four quarts of water here that should be at a rolling boil let's take a look all right that is a rolling boil see how there's nice big bubbles so i'm going to turn off the heat you're turning off the that's right add the corn all right and if you want to throw the lid on for me all right now is there salt in the water no there's no salt in the water we found that adding salt actually toughens the kernels a little bit so we're going to add that at the table okay so corn is in the hot water the water's off the heat put the lid on that's right we're going to let it sit for 10 minutes and that's it how hard was that you know barely a recipe becky i know it's so simple isn't it great yeah so you are pretty specific with the amount of water in the ears of corn right six years of corn four quarts of water all right now what if you wanted to use eight years of corn or even do a dozen if you want to use eight years that's fine just leave the corn in the water for 15 minutes if you want to do a dozen you should do two pots of water four quarts of water in each pot all right so six years of corn 10 minutes you got it the key to perfectly cooked corn isn't thyme it's temperature in uncooked corn the starches inside the kernels are raw and taste chalky but as the corn reaches 150 degrees those starches begin to gelatinize and take on a silkier texture when cooked beyond 170 degrees however the pectin that gives the kernels their structure starts to break down which makes the corn taste mushy so for perfectly cooked corn the sweet spot is 150 to 170 degrees so while the corn finishes up i thought we'd make a fun little flavored salt cool i know something a little different right yeah so i have two tablespoons of kosher salt four teaspoons of chili powder oh hello and three quarters of a teaspoon of lime zest oh nice so it's a chili lime salt chili lime salt really simple something different let's get that nice and mixed up so the corn has been steeping in the hot water for 10 minutes all right but you know what the cool thing is yeah what's the cool thing we could leave this in there for up to 30 minutes really that long yeah it'll stay warm it won't overcook and then if you're busy grilling your steak or working on the rest of your dinner the corns waiting for you that is the real trick to perfectly boiled corn do you do what i do you do the corn roll totally because you know what summer when there's a dedicated stick of butter that's only for the corn that's it oh that butter mixing with the chili powder is making a nice looking paste on the outside of this it's going to be good you know this isn't super high-end farmer's market corn this is just supermarket corn and it tastes amazing yeah you can really taste the sweet flavor and it has a silky texture you still get that crunch so good so the final word on the best way to cook corn is to not boil it but rather let it steep in a pot of boiling water off the heat for 10 minutes so from the test kitchen to your kitchen the ultimate recipe for foolproof boiled corn you can get this recipe all the recipes from this season along with our tastings and testings and selected episodes on our website americastestkitchen.com thanks for watching america's test kitchen what'd you think well leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later i'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 628,864

Keywords: americas test kitchen, cooking, cooking show, how to, public television, easier roast turkey and gravy, foolproof boiled corn, chili lime salt, best oven thermometer, how to cook roast turkey, roast turkey without stuffing, turkey roast gravy recipe, turkey gravy, baking a turkey, how to boil corn, how long to boil corn on the cob, corn toppings, thanksgiving

Id: L5vGMBOdwss

Length: 22min 16sec (1336 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 17 2018