How to Make Our Easier Roast Turkey and Gravy

[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'd say yes all right but we're going 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 up 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 them we wanted to keep this as simple as possible no flipping the bird I agree with not flipping the bird as much as you possibly can special on Thanksgiving so we're gonna start with first removing the giblets and the necklace you're inside here so we're gonna 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 4 tablespoons of kosher salt here and 4 teaspoons of sugar we're gonna 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 it a little more tender sugar does a lot of those same things a little bit less effectively but it also had some sweetness which we like and we're gonna put it on the turkey but it needs to go under the skin which means I'm gonna separate the skin from the meat a little turkey glove turkey love yes just go in and 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 see you like a tricky glove on both hands I do hit 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 that's a full-body massage oh ok that's great and while I'm over here I'll start here we're looking to get about 4 teaspoons under each breast and 2 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 gonna go inside the cavity we're gonna need to put this in the fridge for 24 to 48 hours before I do that I'm gonna trust the legs and I like to kind of go through and under there's probably some sailors not here going on that I don't know about so the last thing want to do is tuck these wings back they're a little bit more resilient than on a chicken so you gotta 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 I'm gonna put this in the fridge uncovered so we get extra dehydration on the outside which leads to better browning so this turkeys been on vacation it's just in the fridge for about 48 hours this skin almost looks like leather it's so dried out really dry that's a good thing that's a good no it doesn't look great right now but I can see into 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 piece 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 great paste right so we really need good browning because we're actually gonna do is shield the breast for part of the cooking time and it's like a 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 gonna 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 this feels a little bit of arts and crafts going on here so we're just gonna 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 gonna do let's make this nice I thought you're gonna make a paper airplane you thought was gonna put my head is a little bit like a paper airplane so what we're gonna do is make this nice little shield gear so this might look a little silly but this is saving us from having to flip the turkey partway 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 baking 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 gonna get a lot more heat we've also shielded this so it's extremely protected so in the end they come out at the same time I gotcha so pre heated baking pan and a shield on the breast means you speed up the dark meat and slow down the white mate exactly 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 gonna move these so I don't brush them with the turkey here pick up the bird right in super-loud so we're gonna go back into the oven and 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 gonna drop the oven temperature down to 325 degrees remove that foil shield and go until the breasts register 165 degrees and the thighs and legs are at 175 so it's been 90 minutes and it definitely looks good it smells good yeah that birds a looker I know what's nice right so let's go into the breasts we're looking for 165 and we got it nice that's good and what's like in the dark meat great we're done well done excellent perfectly done not well done right mm-hmm so I'm gonna grab it out if you wouldn't mind shutting that bet beautiful all right so we're gonna transfer this over to our carving board here I love watching people do this their own way and you got see if tongs and a wooden spoon yes I'm doing most of lifting with my tongs and I like to just tip it let those juices run out cuz we can use those all right well here that is a Norman Rockwell bird right there that's 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 gonna come running out so 45 minutes you can even go to an hour so he gives you time to do others which we're gonna do and I worried that the drippings we're gonna burn in that preheated pan on that hot baking stove but they're gorgeous that's gonna make some good gravy yeah so what we're gonna do first is strain it through this fine mesh strainer here when you use a spatula and just kind of scrape around make sure everything's loosened up that's good flavor right there smells good too smells like the holidays in here it does alright so first we're gonna pass right through this fine mesh strainer this way if there's any bits of skin we give her to that now for a lump free gravy lump free gravy yes in many ways ok so then next up is we're gonna put it into a fat separator there's plenty of rendered fat in here we're gonna want to use some of it but not all of it great so we're gonna let this sit for about ten 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 gonna turn our focus on to the gravy or almost as important as the turkey to me arguably right we're gonna start with the liquid that we took out of the pan and now it's separated out into a 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 mmm so the juices the dip added juices are on the bottom 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 gonna head right over this pan here we're gonna use three tablespoons of this fat for our gravy and that's some flavorful fat so it's gonna lead to a really nice gravy I'm gonna set this aside when heat this over a 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 font 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 gonna drop this down to medium now we're gonna go in with our aromatics I have a small onion that we got minced up here one small carrot that's sliced thin so you 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 softened about 5 to 7 minutes mmm that's starting to smell like gravy yeah you're just getting kind of nice and melted we're gonna blend right into the gravy so next we're gonna go in with our flour we're gonna do a traditional roof stir this around until all that flours coated in fat okay that looks great now we're gonna add in our drippings nice and dark tons of flavoring that's the liquid gold right that's the liquid gold so the trick to adding this in we want to go really slowly I'm seriously meeting dripping hey Jared tell you about the first time my daughter tried gravy no oh 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 gravies 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 yeah 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 of a bottle okay so now I'm gonna go in with three and a quarter cups of water I'm gonna thin out that really thick paste with this 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 gonna go with a quarter cup of white wine okay so our giblets are gonna go back and we got the liquid in there mm-hmm that's gonna 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 go for about ten minutes we'll see you thicken a lot it's gonna reduce a little bit during that time too so concentrate a bit more to sounds good how's the smell winner winner 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 use water instead of store a broth so here you really want to taste before you season salts good me a little bit of pepper so now I'm gonna remove the neck and then we're gonna 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 gonna 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 so well can't have that that's not 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 on to the thigh and I just make small little cuts until I see that bone pop out right there right yeah go right in around that and that will come out right for you so transfer this over here and I find its easiest to go in and excise the meat a little bit off of the wishbone first and then I start up on the breast here use that whole blade gonna be nice and close to this breast bone but you can start peeling it back and 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 the turkey where you get none of the skin all right yeah so I like leaving them a little bit thicker like this are you a white or dark or both yes yes okay very good answer a nice piece of breast there a couple pieces of five oh that looks good all right a little gravy for us please mm-hmm good it's awesome mmm the meat is really nicely seasoned mm-hmm it's juicy it's not that dried-out old Turkey that you sometimes get its classic right classic flavor dan this turkey is awesome in the gravy winter not too bad right yeah winter 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 a 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 thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen what you think we'll 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: 779,396

Keywords: thanksgiving, thanksgiving recipes, turkey, turkey recipes, how to make turkey, how to make roast turkey, thanksgiving turkey, thanksgiving turkey recipes, how to cook turkey, how to cook roast turkey, thanksgiving turkey tips, recipes, easy turkey recipes, easy roast turkey recipes

Id: FzlOyzgrc1Y

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 18 2019