Perfect Roast Turkey recipe

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12/12/2010

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For those of you who prefer turkey for Christmas dinner, here is a fool proof recipe to make your own perfect Roast Turkey.

Ingredients

Turkey size of your choice
Butter
1 or 2 packets of bacon rashers

Stuffing:
500gr sausage meat
handful breadcrumbs
1 tbspoon dried sage
Bunch of chopped parsley
3 chopped onions
1 beaten egg
Salt and pepper

Directions

Preparing the turkey:
Remove the giblets, liver, neck etc from the turkey & reserve these for making the gravy stock/base. Make sure that the turkey is at room temperature before cooking it.

Fill the cavity of the turkey with stuffing - don't pack it in too tightly though.

You might need to secure the neck flap/cavity openings with a wooden kebab skewer, broken off so that it fits into the oven. Place turkey in a large roasting pan.

Now slather salted butter thickly all over the outside skin of the turkey. Place bacon rashers over the butter in rows (sometimes I do this, other times I don't - this year I left the bacon off). The butter/bacon make for a really moist turkey. Season the turkey with salt & pepper. (Not too much salt as the bacon & butter are quite salty already).

Delia says to wrap the turkey in a "tent" of tin (aluminum) foil, in effect creating and oven within an oven. To be honest, my oven is not large enough for this so I simply take a large sheet of tin foil and place it tightly over the top of the turkey. I usually roast my turkey breast side down.

Cooking the turkey:
Place the turkey in a 240C/475F/Gas Mark 9 oven for 10 - 15 minutes to give it a blast of heat.

Then turn the oven down to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4 & cook the turkey for about 3 hours (depending on size/weight of turkey see comments section)

Then remove the foil, baste the turkey with the juices found at the bottom of the pan, & return to the oven to cook for a further 40 minutes at 200C - 220C/425F - 450F/Gas Mark 7 - 8.

Remove from the oven, removing the bacon rashers too & adding them to the juices at the bottom of the pan (these can then be added to stock to make a gravy).

To check if the turkey is cooked, pierce the thickest part of the leg with a skewer & press it - the juices should run clear. You can also tweak the legs slightly - if they have some "give" then the turkey is done. You should also notice juices bubbling under the surface of the skin.

Allow the turkey to rest for at least 3/4 hour before carving it. This is so that the juices can be re-absorbed into the meat.

Comments

As a guideline, a turkey should be cooked for 1 hour plus 20 minutes per kg (= total cooking time). Eg. a 5 kg turkey should be cooked for approximately 2 hours and 40 minutes.

Read more on Lynda Hayes' blog "Food Fun and Farm Life in East Africa".

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