Fully deboned turkey | demi glacé made with the bones

i have been and remain an advocate of simple roast turkey with gravy but this is a more involved approach that i've been wanting to try for a while i fully de-boned this turkey before roasting it and i use the bones to make a turkey demi-glass which is delicious what i like about this method is all the hard work is done in advance on the day of your big holiday feast all you do is throw a pan in the oven and slicing up boneless meat could not be easier the sauce you just reheat you're done i'd suggest starting two days out from said feast though you could start the day before this is a big turkey 20 pounds nine kilos but you can do this with any size bird and i'll get some kitchen scissors and my boning knife but you could use any really sharp knife flip the bird around so that you're looking at its backbone there are only four places where the skeleton protrudes up through the meat the shoulder joints there and the hip joints down here other than those four points all the meat is just sitting on top of the bones so all you have to do is peel it off i've cut straight down along one side of the spine now i'll just let my knife follow the bones and you can feel them super easy just slowly peel the meat off of that central skeleton and i've hit my first joint the hip joint there lots of people have lots of ways of getting through the joints here's my crude but easy approach grab kitchen scissors get them around the joint grip down and then twist hard just kind of lever that joint around until you start to dislocate it when you open it up a bit you can get in with your scissors and start snipping away at the ligaments and other stuff connecting that femur to the pelvic girdle i'm through and that whole hip and leg quarter is now free up here i've hit the shoulder joint and i'll do the exact same thing get my scissors around the joint twist to lever it apart a bit and then i can snip or cut the ligaments attaching the humerus to the scapula both joints on this side are now cut so i am free and clear i can just keep peeling meat off of the ribs one little slice at a time following the bones with my knife we're cutting the breast meat off now and i'm gonna stop when i reach the very bottom which will be the sternum the breastbone that half of the bird is now free so i can keep using my dominant hand i'll simply rotate the bird to do the other side yes i'm doing this directly on my counter i'm gonna have to spray down this counter no matter what i do so i figure there's no point in trying to do this on a little cutting board everything is gonna spill out anyway again i'm just peeling the meat off the backbone until i hit a joint and i can't go any further there's the other hip joint i can feel it even though i can't see it i'll just get in with my scissors grab the joint and twist to dislocate it if you do not yet have basic knowledge of bird anatomy i would not recommend doing this break down a few whole chickens cooked and raw before you attempt anything ambitious as this i'm through the hip and now i can peel off the rest of the leg quarter real easy one more joint to go and honestly the wing or shoulder joint here is small enough even on a big turkey that you can dislocate it by hand this is how i normally do all the joints on a chicken just pop the joint and now that it's loose you can easily get your knife in there and cut through any tissue still holding the joint together start peeling that breast meat off of the ribs and the breast bone and now the british and french sides of the chunnel have converged just peel the meat off the sternum there maybe just break off the wishbone and the central skeleton or carcass is free i'll just put that over here with the neck and the giblets all great stuff for the gravy or demi-gloss there are a few bits of cartilage still hanging out around where the breastbone was i'll trim those out next challenge is to get the leg and thigh bones out first just cut straight down to the thigh bone and then peel some meat off the sides then i'll slip my knife in and under oops that's actually facing the wrong way get the knife facing out and then saw out toward where the hip was that end of the femur is now free same process on the knee and the shin bone there the tibia just cut straight down across the length of it and then start to peel meat off the sides until you can see what you're doing now i think i'll just grab the hip bone and start sawing underneath the knee peeling that off peeling the tibia off the meat underneath and then once i get down around the ankle i'll just lever those bones over and the scissors make it real easy to snip all that off save that for the sauce what's left are these tendons that are so huge on a big turkey they're like little bones they make most of the turkey leg virtually inedible but with this method we can pull them out i wish i could say you can grab them with a paper towel or your scissors but honestly pliers are the tool for the job grab the tendon by the end hold the meat back with your other hand and pull hard you can pull all those out like porcupine needles save for sauce same over here saw out under the femur that's free cut down along the knee and the tibia peel some meat off the sides grab the thigh bone get under with the knife and saw out toward the ankle scissors are great for snipping where those tendons join up down near the ankle bones are free use the pliers to pull out the tendons the wings honestly you could just cut off whole and throw them in with the sauce there's not much great meat on them i am deboning the upper portion by just cutting straight down along the humerus and peeling the meat off the sides in chicken wing terminology this is the drumette that's some good meat i'll slip my knife under the bone and saw out the winglets i'm not going to bother fighting for and certainly not the wing tip at the end all of that will just cut off whole and save for the sauce now i'll just look around for anything left that i don't want to eat any little bits of cartilage hanging around any super blubbery globs of fat if i'm gonna go through all this work i want the roast that i have left to be 100 edible and all these trimmings are great for sauce last thing is i'll just flip back these pectoralis minor muscles also known as the poultry tenderloin just fold them out and the meat will sit at a much more even thickness to that same end i'll butterfly the thickest part of the breast a little bit just one or two shallow cuts to that thick part to get it to lie a little flatter so that it will cook in the same time as the rest i know this looks like a failed experimental surgery right now but just wait till it's cooked we're done let's take a break maybe i'll scan my grocery receipt with fetch rewards the sponsor of this video we all tend to spend a lot of money around the holidays but you can get reward points back on all retail receipts not just groceries or restaurants here's a bookstore receipt you just take a picture of it with the free fetch rewards app hit submit and get points back immediately you can also hit the e-receipt button and it'll scan your email inbox for any eligible receipts i spend most of my money online so no surprise i get a lot more points back this way let's see what i can get the rewards are basically gift cards that you can spend at nearly any retail store or food chain you could think of amazon i think i'll just save money on my next trip to the bookstore done download the app yourself just hit my link in the description use my code regucia and you'll get 3 000 points on your first receipt that's a limited time offer just for you use my link in code in the description thanks fetch rewards back to the scene of the crime i'm not the biggest fan of this but with everything wide open here it would be very easy to do a quick salt cure or dry brine on this meat just put on as much salt as you would normally use to flavor this much meat no more no less might as well put on some other seasonings while we're here lots of pepper and maybe some herbs dried thyme and sage classic for the holiday and also nice on this side would be some garlic powder and onion powder okay flip her around and that looks better already doesn't it but a 20 pound bird all flayed out like this is too big to fit on my baking tray i could cut it in half through the breast and have two mirror image halves but i'm going to snip the leg quarters off there's basically only skin attaching the breast to the thigh here so it should be very obvious where to cut and now i can put my dark meat on one tray and my white meat on another that's a bonus they cook really differently and now we have independent control over them again as much salt on the skin as you would normally use to season right before cooking no more no less it's mostly going to be absorbed into the meat during the curing process pepper two and i'll do some of those same herbs but no garlic or onion powder those things tend to burn under intense dry heat they'll be protected on the underside but not on top here last thing is to kind of tuck any exposed meat up under the skin when the meat is exposed in the fridge it goes leathery when the skin dries out it gets crispy and delicious in the fridge uncovered the point here is to dry out the skin like they do for peking duck normal food safety protocol is to put raw meat at the bottom of the fridge in case it leaks you don't want it leaking down onto your food but i'm pretty sure these trays are secure and if i put them on top my kids won't be able to reach them when they're groping around in the fridge for snacks them bones and they go to my roasting tray with the neck the skin any trimmings i'll cut a couple of onions in half and drop those in in the oven at like 400 fahrenheit 200c to roast and develop some brown flavor after like half an hour i'll squirt on a little tomato paste that will not make this tomatoey it'll just boost the umami in the end and darken the color a bit then i'll flip the pieces around a little tomato paste on the bones is a pretty common trick for demi-gloss i find that if i put it on at the very beginning it burns whatever you do don't let anything burn like see i'm starting to get a few black bits there that's bad with a demi-gloss all the flavors get majorly concentrated i should have pulled this out a few minutes earlier that was about an hour and normally i'd transfer these into a big stock pot but i'm gonna try simmering this right here in my roasting tray it's already dirty and i think it'll be just big enough the culinary school types tell you to start a stock in cold water this is because the albumin protein found in meat does not dissolve in hot water i don't think it makes a meaningful difference but i am using my filtered water from the fridge because everything is going to be concentrated and the knoxville tap water does not taste so great making water was way better i'll be able to get everything submerged as it all cooks down and softens this is super optional but for some umami boost i'm throwing in a handful of dried porcini turkey gravy is often boosted with mushrooms tastes real good some whole peppercorns in and maybe bay leaves will do something in there i doubt it bring that up to a boil reduce to a simmer i don't have a lid for this so foil two pieces i'll just let that go for a couple hours and here we are looking good i'll stir everything around and things are starting to fall apart so i can get everything submerged now gotta top off the water though to have a nice stock to make gravy you could honestly stop right there but i'm making demi-gloss which is thickened with gelatin not starch so i need to dissolve all the collagen in there into gelatin which will take a while i'm now about to go to bed so i'll give it one more stir top off the water and make sure it's just barely bubbling i don't want all that water to evaporate while i'm asleep because then everything would burn here we are the next day simmering roasted bones for this long tends to throw off some pretty intense smells don't be dismayed if it's kind of gross at this stage i used to do this on a hot plate outside until i got a decent kitchen exhaust system grab a bone and if it breaks real easy that's a sign you've extracted all you can i simmered this about 16 hours it's the day before the feast now i'm just fishing out most of the solids this will make it a lot easier for me to pass everything through a strainer in a sec before i take these to the compost i'll pour any liquid from the bowl back in now i'm going to bring this to a boil and reduce it down by maybe a third just so it's smaller and easier to deal with here's a cheat a packet of unflavored gelatin you don't have to do that we've got plenty of gelatin in there already but this is for a big feast i want lots of sauce to feed lots of people and a little extra gelatin will allow me to get that texture that i want without reducing it down quite as much that powder tends to clump so that's why i'm letting it boil for a while to dissolve and then everything is going through a sieve you gotta cool this down fast and there's lots of ways to do that today i'm doing the huge bowl filled with ice water and the smaller bowl nested inside sieve on stock goes through i was sure to stop boiling this before it thickened up very much at this stage if you reduce it down too thick a lot of it will stick to the remaining bones and such and you'll lose it plus if it's too thick the fat will not separate out as cleanly as we chill this down it won't be able to escape and rise to the surface you can already see that fat rising up stir this around let it transfer all its heat down through that metal bowl and into the ice water it's amazing how fast this cools down which is good because it's a high protein low sodium low acid solution that could be very hospitable to microbes 10 minutes later give it one more stir it's barely lukewarm i'll pull that out cover it up because fat absorbs smells in the fridge you can also put this in the freezer if you're in a hurry later that same day here we are the fat has surfaced and solidified or has it that's plenty cold but it's still pretty liquid which means this turkey is relatively low in saturated fat it's not like doing this with beef where the fat is a solid puck on top that you can just lift off this is still pretty easy though because the stock underneath is a very firm block of jello i'm not penetrating it at all as i scrape the fat off the top that's plenty clean and now you could totally just make the world's best gravy by frying an equal quantity of flour in this fat to make a roux let it brown a bit stir in the stock boil until thickened you're done but i'm not doing that this time i'm going to save this fat for a thing this meaty jello i will transfer to my widest pan or at least as much of it as i can fit in there i'm not making that mistake twice get that boiling down and concentrating until syrupy a meat glaze this concentrated cannot hold fat inside itself without a lot of emulsifying help so that's why we had to get all the fat out to make demi-glass now i can fit in the rest without any danger of this boiling over you don't have to stir this constantly until it starts to get really syrupy then you gotta move it stuff could stick to the bottom or the sides and burn that's looking very nice tasting very nice i think i'm gonna put like a glass of white wine in there i think that'll brighten this up give it some floral notes that'll be very festive and the sweetness will be nice but really really stir or do this at a lower temperature for a much longer time it'd be a tragedy to burn it and there's lots of sugar in there now that sugar burns a gelatin thickened sauce like this will be much thicker at eating temperature so when you think you're close you might want to turn the heat off a bit and then assess i'd say that's looking just right time to season there's no salt in this yet other than the salts that were naturally in the animal this is hilarious it is so glossy that my camera cannot focus on it then you can just scrape all that into a bowl chill and reheat tomorrow tomorrow is today the big feast all you do is pull the trays out of the fridge after 48 hours the skin is really dry and most of the salt has been absorbed deep into the meat which is good if you're into that 400 fahrenheit 200c i will stop and baste the skin once or twice if you want crazy crispy skin do not baste just rub the skin down with oil before you put it in the oven and never touch it again there's some water in these basting juices that'll reduce our final crispiness just a little bit but i think the flavor will be better so that's a trade-off i am comfortable with if this turkey was on the bone it would take five hours at least off the bone it's been just over an hour and the white meat is almost done the dark meat is done normally dark meat takes longer than white meat but off the bone the pieces are way smaller there's more surface area so that's already at 185 fahrenheit 85c and that's my preferred internal temp for dark meat you can cook it a little bit less white meat you definitely don't want to take past 160 fahrenheit 71c carryover heat will easily take it a few degrees further into what they say are the minimum safe temperatures as it rests i might put the dark meat back in the oven just to warm it back up again if you want more color just jack the heat way up at the very end but i think turkey tastes best when it's kind of blonde so there's everything enough meat for a dozen people at least if this were gravy that wouldn't be nearly enough sauce but this glaze is far more intense than gravy so you don't need as much however if you want more sauce volume you could stir in a bunch of butter at the last minute as long as the heat is really low nothing is bubbling you should be able to melt this in without breaking the natural emulsion of the butter people often finish demi-gloss-based sauces with butter it works great if anything it makes the flavor much more delicious it changes the texture it maybe makes it a little warmer or fluffier on the palette that's the only way i can think to describe it the pure demi is just more glazy i actually set aside half of my demi to keep it pure you're only looking at the other half right now and by slowly melting in butter i've nearly doubled my sauce volume which is great for a big family meal give that a taste and re-season especially if you used unsalted butter here's half of that breast ready to slice and lauren is always the skin thief [Applause] that's so good indeed the salt cure and the air drying have made that skin incredibly crisp and tasty and here's the best part of this whole deal i can just slice this up on the board it's not up in the air stuck on top of a giant rib cage there's no bones to work around nothing inedible it could not be easier on the day of this is so much less stress than a conventional turkey dinner and the difference is even more dramatic on this dark meat normally the skin on the dark meat is soggy because it was down on the bottom submerged in juice this is so crisp and normally you can slice hardly any meat off of the leg because of those bony tendons every slice here is totally clean totally edible and cooked way hotter than the white meat which is the way that i think it's best you might want to let everybody know that they should go easy on the sauce it's way stronger than gravy and since the skin is so crispy it's nice that we don't have to wet it all down with sauce now i will tell you that i am not a fan of brined turkey meat a wet brine gives it the texture of cheap bologna a dry brine like we did here makes the texture a little too firm for me and i think the uniform saltiness provided by either one kind of drowns out the subtle flavor of turkey i prefer to have my sauce bring the salt and if i were to do this again i would do it the exact same way but i would not salt the turkey in advance maybe i'd salt the skin a little bit to help it dry but i'd season conventionally right before the oven that said maybe i'm crazy everybody else seems to love poultry brines so you do you and don't forget side dishes i've got a few linked in the description and if you follow this method you'll have a lot more time and brain space on the day of your feast to cook those side dishes or you can make your family cook them i mean you deboned a whole damn turkey haven't you done enough somebody give you a beer

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 1,980,261

Keywords:

Id: peeRWHI7FpY

Length: 18min 7sec (1087 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 12 2021