Choose Your Own Turkey Adventure

If starting with a fresh bird that’s wet, let it air-dry in the refrigerator overnight or for up to three days. If there isn’t time, dry out the skin by starting the cook and then paint on the elixir- when the skin is dry to the touch, about 15 to 20 minutes. Then return to the oven and finish the cook. Other Turkey Adventures Take the basic recipe off the tracks with these additional turkey methods. Core Temp Compromises White and dark meat are at their best at different doneness temperatures. And when you’re cooking low-and-slow that means you need to choose your target core temp based on your top priority for perfection. Is the juiciest white meat the most important? Set the thermometer to 150 °F (68 °C) and know that you’ll need to return the dark meat to the oven while carving the breast in order to bring it up to at least a tender 170 °F (77 °C). Don’t care as much about perfect white meat and don’t want to take that extra step? Set the thermometer to 170 °F (77 °C). If you’ve brined the bird, it’ll still be plenty juicy throughout. Cooking from Frozen Most of us purchase our turkeys frozen, and while common practice dictates fully thawing the bird before roasting, cooking it from frozen is actually juicier and safer. Even more important for Thanksgiving — cooking from frozen is also faster than thawing. You can go from freezer to table in about 5 hours. Compare that with the days (even up to a week) it takes to thaw in the fridge or 12 hours it takes in tepid, often unsafe water. And that’s before spending up to several hours in the oven. It also ends up retaining more of the natural juices than slow thawing, so this is a win-win when you’re starting with a frozen bird. A few tips to cook from frozen: start the oven at 225 to 250 °F (107 to 121 °C) so that you don’t overcook the surface while the core is still frozen. Once the skin is wet to the touch, remove the bird, season it with salt (and whatever herbs or spices you want to use), and let the bird dry brine as it cooks. Once the turkey is fully thawed, about 2 hours, you’ll be able to remove any frozen giblets from the cavity, and brush with the Golden Brown Turkey Elixir. Insert a Combustion Predictive Thermometer into the thickest part of the breast (avoid the bone). Return the turkey to the oven and roast until it reaches 150 °F (68 °C). Proceed with the steps for cooling and browning the skin as in the basic recipe. Speedy Turkey Owners of the Combustion Predictive Thermometer can apply the low-and-slow method but about 30% faster by monitoring the surface temperature. Start with a hotter oven, around 300 °F (150 °C). When the surface temperature of the turkey comes up to within 10 °F of the target core temp, drop the oven to 200 °F, and then continue to drop the oven temperature to as low as it can go while the bird finishes cooking. The goal is to keep the surface temperature to around the target temperature throughout the cook. Technical Notes Low-and-Slow Roasting: A low-and-slow cook replicates the best attributes of sous vide cooking, namely really juicy and evenly cooked meat. Cooking in the oven instead of a water bath helps dry out the skin, which makes it easier to brown and crisp. Using the Combustion Predictive Thermometer makes it easy to keep an eye on the surface temperature of the meat, keeping it just a bit above your desired core temperature. (You can also use a wired probe to monitor the core temperature, choose a low oven temp, and call it good enough.) The cooking time will be quite long when cooking low and slow because the flow of heat is proportional to the difference in temperature between the turkey’s surface and its core. With the surface only a bit hotter than the target doneness, the core temp is going to rise slowly. Just like sous vide, this is the price you pay for meat that’s tender and juicy from surface to center. Ultra-Crispy Skin: In order to get the crispiest, puffiest skin, think about it like chicharrones. During the low-and-slow cook, the collagen in the skin breaks down into gelatin, putting it in the perfect condition to crisp in the oven. Letting the turkey rest for at least 30 minutes after this initial cook allows the hot, steamy water in the skin to condense back down to a liquid. To crisp, return the turkey to the hottest oven you’ve got to heat the skin back up as quickly as possible. This turns the liquid in the skin back into steam, stretching the skin thin, taut, and ready to crisp. The interior of the bird will be fine during a long rest. The core takes about the same amount of time to fully cool as it took to roast the bird in the first place; if it took 5 hours to cook, it’ll take 5 hours to cool. Dry-Brining: Contrary to what is written in most recipes, you do not need to do a precise calculation to determine the weight of salt needed for a turkey’s dry brine. You actually cannot overdo it on the salt. Even if you add what looks like way too much salt to the outside of the bird, only 23% of the salt can dissolve into water. The rest will just stay on the surface and can be brushed off. (Think about a salt-baked fish; despite being literally buried in salt, the fish is still not overseasoned.) Evaporative Cooling: One of the keys to low-and-slow roasting is the concept of evaporative cooling. While the oven may be set at 215 °F or 250 °F, it’s lying. Well, sort of. This temperature is reflective of the temperature circulating in the oven cavity, not the temperature on the surface of the turkey. Turkey, like any food, is full of water. And as the turkey cooks, the water evaporates from its surface at 212 °F (100 °C). This water mixes with the hotter surrounding air, creating a cool and invisible cloud of moisture around the bird. It’s this evaporative cooling temperature that the turkey actually feels and is moving towards as it cooks. So controlling the surface temperature means controlling the true cooking temperature. Cooking from frozen = juicier meat: During slow, traditional thawing, a process known as recrystallization occurs within meat. The muscle fibers inside the meat thaw faster because their dissolved molecules lower their freezing point. Outside the fibers, the relatively pure water is still mostly ice, creating an imbalance. Liquid water from inside the muscle fibers is then drawn out through osmosis, and as this water leaves the fibers, it refreezes on the outside, causing ice crystals between the muscle fibers to grow. These expanding ice crystals further squeeze the thawing muscle fibers, forcing even more juice out. When all of this ice outside the muscle fibers eventually melts, it flows out of the meat and we see it as moisture loss. The slower the thawing process, the more time is available for recrystallization and the more moisture seeps out. Faster thawing? Less moisture loss and juicier meat. Advanced Enhancements The basic recipe produces a turkey with tender, juicy meat and crispy skin. For Norman Rockwell-perfect browned skin with a crisp texture and flavors of cranberry, vanilla, and caramel, brush the bird with golden brown elixir while roasting.