1 hour ago, Smokeydoke said:Are you going to tell us how to cook a turkey or where we can find a non-garbage turkey?
I'm in the camp that turkey is only for sandwiches and its sole purpose is to be a delivery system for mayo. But I definitely fit btbyrd's 3 and 4. I've only bought the frozen butterball variety and I've only cooked it in an oven (one year it was deep-fried, but it still wasn't that good). It tastes like gamey chicken to me, and I don't understand why people go through so much work every year to eat it. I'd love to learn the secret, please!
Sourcing: (Almost all of this goes for chicken too.)
The things that make a non-garbage turkey a non-garbage turkey are its genetics, feed, environment, and processing. Modern farmed turkeys are freaks of nature designed to pack on as much breast meat into a spheroid shape as fast as humanly possible. They grow too fast. They're kept inside all the time, not that it matters since can barely move on account of dem tig ol' bitties. After they reach a gigantic slaughter weight at an astonishingly young age, they're killed, plucked, and processed. Usually this involves chilling the birds in water and then pumping them full of a sodium and phosphate solution. All that water from the chilling and brining processes dilute flavor and make the skin soggy.
Ideally, what you want is a bird that wasn't bred to pack on as much meat as possible, as fast as possible, with as little effort as possible. You want a bird that takes more than two weeks to weigh 20 pounds. You want a bird that's lived a life... that's walked around, flexed its muscles, eaten some grubs and worms... something that's maybe even seen a half birthday -- or more. These can be tricky to find. The first stop would be your local farmer's market. If you can't do that, but are made of money, you could order a heritage bird from Heritage Meats USA or D'Artagnan. But even if you can't find or afford something like this, you can usually find something at the supermarket that's been air-chilled and hasn't been pumped full of brine. Bell and Evans is my favorite, kinda-widely available brand. If you don't see it, talk to the meat dude. Or meat lady. You know, whatever...
Cooking:
There's no one right way to cook anything, but... For the love of God, don't cook the white meat to 165F. The best way to cook a turkey is to take it apart and cook the dark meat separately from the light meat. Cooking it whole requires compromise. Breaking it down improves quality. That goes for "stuffing" too.
My go-to method is to break the bird down and do the white meat according to ChefStep's SV recipe (131F/12-18hours) and confit the legs in duck fat before smoking them on the grill. Roast off the carcass and wings to make stock. (Fortify that with additional wings and ground turkey). I mostly just follow this playbook:
The finishing step is up to you, really. Grill it, fry it, sear it, smoke it, broil it...
If you don't want to do sous vide, I've also had great results using the Chefsteps "Turkey Crown Roast" recipe in a traditional oven.The butchery for that makes for a striking presentation. I may do that this year, actually... Anyway, CS has a nice video on how to break down the bird for that recipe.
Apart from these recipes, I've also made great smoked turkey, great deep fried turkey, and great turkey that was cooked underneath a trash can. There's no best way.
But the way NOT to do it is to cook a Butterball and rely on its built-in pop-up thermometer.
