The center piece to my traditional Christmas dinner is a slow roasted turkey. I learned this from my Grandpa Skakum who would slowly roast our turkey overnight. Low and slow gave a delicious moist turkey. I have added my own touches to this family favorite over the years borrowing tips and techniques from various sources and have come up with what I believe is a very moist, tender and tasty turkey.
One of the things I have found I really enjoy is the tart taste of apple in combination with Turkey. Here we will inject the turkey with apple cider and butter steeped in herbs, throw an apple in the cavity of the turkey to help flavor the drippings and top it all off with an apple cider turkey gravy.
Ingredients:
1 Turkey (15-20 pounds)
1 Apple quartered
3 carrots cut in half lengthwise
5 stalks of celery
1 leek cut into ½ inch slices and washed thoroughly (leeks can be full of sand)
1 bunch of thyme
6 sage leaves
2 sprigs of rosemary
Kosher Salt
Fresh ground black pepper
Turkey Injection
1 Cup of Butter
2 Cups of Apple Cider
1 Tbsp Sea Salt
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
A small bunch of fresh thyme
3 sage leaves
Apple Cider Gravy
2 cups Drippings from the Turkey
1/2 cup Flour (3/4 cup)
2 cups Turkey Stock
1 cup Apple Cider
When cooking a turkey your biggest risk is drying that bad boy out. Moist turkey is a delicious treat, dry turkey is like a trip through a sand storm with you mouth open. Not pleasant.
I take a number of steps to ensure a moist turkey. First of I will either brine or inject it. I have come to prefer injecting the turkey because it is less costly, less messy and I believe the results are superior, though a brined bird is also delicious.
I like to inject my turkey with a mixture of butter and apple cider which has been infused with fresh herbs.
Take the ingredients for the turkey injection and put it into a small sauce pot, melt the butter and allow it to slowly simmer for 30 minutes to an hour. Cool to room temperature. (This is important, do not inject hot liquid into your turkey). Once cool stir or shake the injection liquid and then using a injection syringe. I inject 2 loads of liquid into each breast. I inject at the front of each breast (on the side of the neck) and alter the angle of the needle to inject into different areas while using as few holes as possible. I then inject one load into each drumstick and into each thigh. This adds lots of flavor and moisture into the turkey.
Once the turkey is injected I cover it in cling wrap and refrigerate it overnight. This allows it to marinade the meat.
Prior to roasting the turkey I line the pan with celery, leeks, carrot and onion. This helps stop the turkey from sticking to the roasting pan and adds significant flavor to the drippings.
I then place the turkey on the bed of aromatic and insert the quartered apple, thyme, sage and rosemary into the cavity. This will add some flavor to the meat but again I do it to add flavor to the drippings, which is the base for the gravy and stuffing. I then salt and pepper the bird.
At this point I insert a probe into the turkey in the largest portion of the breast close to but not touching the bone to measure the temperature and allow it to come to 40 degrees F before putting it in the oven. Putting the turkey into the oven cold will increase cook time and dry out the meat, allowing it to sit out above 40 degrees causes food safety issues.
Once the turkey is up to temperature put it into a 500 degree oven for 30 minutes. Then lower the temperature to 325 degrees for the rest of the cooking time. This initial sear will help seal the skin and trap more moisture in the turkey. If some areas of the skin start to get too dark cover them in aluminium foil to keep those areas from scorching.
Allow the turkey to roast in a slow oven until the temperature reaches 165 degrees. Baste the turkey with the drippings every 45 minutes or so to get a nice color on the skin for presentation and to keep the meat moist.
When the turkey is to temperature take it out of the oven and cover it with foil and allow it to rest. Once it is cool enough I move it to a platter or another roaster and allow it to continue resting while I make the gravy and fortify the stuffing using the pan drippings. Do not carve too early or you will release all of the juices and again end up with dry meat.
While the turkey rests pour the pan drippings out of the roaster and reserve keeping the aromatics in the pan. I usually end up with around 4 cups of drippings. Put the roaster on medium heat on the stove top (do not try with disposable aluminum roasters). Add back 2 cups of the drippings and heat up until it is boiling. Add the flour into the drippings and aromatics and stir with a whisk. Allow this to cook for about 5 minutes to eliminate any raw flour taste. Then add in the turkey stock and cider. Bring to the boil while whisking continuously. Once it comes to a boil strain off all of the solids and put the gravy into a pot to keep warm. If it is not thick enough put a tablespoon of corn starch and a quarter cup of cider into a bowl and stir to combine and add to the gravy. This should tighten it up. You do not want overly thick gravy, it loses flavor as you add starches like flour or cornstarch. Once you get the consistency you want salt and pepper to taste. This is important, use your palette.
At this point you have the foundation to a great holiday meal. I will post recipes for other sides in the near future.
Cooking ahead for a crowd:
For the Christmas at Stepping Stone meal I roasted three 23 pound turkeys using the method below and the response was very positive. In this case I needed to cook the turkeys in advance then reheat the meat the day of the meal. The trick was to do this without drying out the meat. To achieve this I broke each turkey down into four pieces; two whole breasts, two drumsticks and two whole thighs. I then vacuum sealed a them in 3 bags; two containing a breast and a drumstick and one containing the two thighs. You don’t want to carve the turkey as that will just release moisture during reheating. I then added a ladle of drippings to each bag and sealed them. They were then chilled down and stored until the party a couple days later. At that time we just put a big pot of water on and held it just below boiling and put the bags of bird into the bath for about 20 minutes. When we carved the turkey it was very moist, as if it were carved table side. Try this if you have to cook a dinner for a crowd.
Tim's Kitchen Table 
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