How to Roast the Perfect Turkey

Emily: Who hasn’t had a turkey that’s too tough, too dry, or just poorly cut? I’m Emily Rodney here at Gilt restaurant in midtown Manhattan to find out how to roast the perfect golden turkey. So let’s go Behind the Burner and meet the Chef. I’m here with executive Chef Justin Bogle. Chef Bogle, we have a great organic tartanian Turkey and you’re going to teach me how to roast it today. So let’s get started. Chef Bogle: We’re going to start off by making a brine for the turkey. Emily: Okay, what is the purpose for the brine? Chef Bogle: So what the brine is going to do is it is going to alter the muscle structure of the turkey and allow the turkey to absorb this salted aromatic water, really flavor the turkey and keep it moist during the cooking process. Emily Perfect. Chef Bogle: And right here we a little tray of some of aromatic salt, sugar, so we have two cups of salt, one cup of sugar, about five garlic clove sliced, two shallots, a little sachet with some rosemary, thyme, and parsley and a couple of bay leaves. Emily: It seems like a lot of salt does it dissolve fully in the water or do you need that for the flavor? Chef Bogle: We’re going to dilute it with two gallons of water. So for every gallon of water you’re going to add roughly a couple of salt. If you want a little more less salt, you can back of and you can do like three quarters of a cup. So we’ll start of with just a little bit of the water and we’ll just go ahead and add all our aromatics. Emily: You want me to help here? Chef Bogle: Yeah go for it. You can start dumping everything in there. Emily: Everything in? Chef Bogle: Everything in there. So now that we’ve brought the beginning stages of our brine up to a simmer. We’ll just let it cool down for a second, let the simmer come down, we’ve dissolved all the sugar and the salt in the liquid. So now we can take that we can add it back to the rest of our liquid which will then go over the turkey. So we’ll just take that. Emily: So this is the cold water? Chef Bogle:` That’s the ice cold water. So we have some ice cold water and then a little boiling water. It’s not going to be too hot. It’s going to cool down pretty fast and then we’ll just plug the turkey in the pot right there and this will go into the fridge for. I like to go up to 24 hours. Like I said, any brine is better than no brine. So we’ll take this. You got to take a pot large enough to hold the turkey and you have to find a pot large enough to fit in your fridge. If you can’t, you really don’t have room in your fridge the technique that I’ve seen is a picnic cooler. You get a picnic cooler. Emily: Fill it with ice. Chef Bogle: Fill it with the brine and the turkey and fill Ziplock baggies with ice put the Ziplock baggies in there and just make sure that if you have a thermometer, make sure that it’s always below 40 degrees. Emily: You want to make sure that it doesn’t start becoming room temperature because then the turkey’s going to go bad. Chef Bogle: You’re going to have a spoiled rotten turkey and a spoiled rotten Thanksgiving. However dealing with turkey I like to use rubber gloves or any protein I don’t like getting my hand onto so we’re going to take the turkey. Actually this pot is like perfect size for this turkey. Emily: Do we add a sachet? Chef Bogle: No. We got this sachet here and then we’ll add another one with the similar flavors when we roast it and then we’ll all those aromatics on there, all that stuff. That’s flavor that’s where the flavors got from Emily: I even smelled it after I came off of the stove. Chef Bogle: Now we’ll just plug this on the fridge overnight 24 hours hopefully if you have enough time like I said before, a little brine is better that no brine and then the next day, we’ll take this and we’ll pop it in the oven. Emily: Those are great tips. Chef Bogle: So now I got the turkey on a brine yesterday so we already have one done and it’s been in there for a little longer than 24 hours. Emily: Okay great so we don’t have to wait a whole 24. Chef Bogle: No, no, no we’ll get it all done today, so we’re just going to take this turkey out of the brine and we’ve going to rinse it off. I have a sink right here full of ice cold water. We’re just going to give it a good rinse get any of that shallots and the garlic and the bay leaf that’s stuck to it and just rinse of some of that salty water that be might inside. So I’m just going to give it a quick dunk in the bath and then if you want to go ahead and just start packing that’s right. You want to dry it of before we truss it. We’re going to go ahead and truss the turkey and afterwards what trussing is going to do is its going to bring it all into a complete package so you have this nice tight bundle of turkey. It’s going to cook evenly and it’s just going to make it sort of t a super tight package, you get an even roast on the outside, even color and you get a nice and juicy turkey. We’re going to go ahead and we’re going to truss the turkey with the butcher’s twine that we both picked up on our local butcher shop. So here we have the sachet the same herbs we used in the brine, parsley, rosemary, and thyme. We’re just going to plug that right in the center of the turkey. We’re not going to stuff the turkey. We’re going to start at the back side. We’ll it’s actually the top side where the head used to be. There’s a little part of the neck so we’re going to wrap this butcher’s twine around the little neck piece here, dip it down and we’ll come around the front of the turnkey. So now we got it here. Emily: You want me to hold the legs? Chef Bogle: Yeah you know what it you want to hold the string for a second, we’re going to turn the turkey this way so it’s easy to work with. Okay so now we have the turkey. We’re going to tie a surgeon’s knot. So surgeon’s is the same as the regular knot except you’re going to go through twice and that’s going to help you when you do this, it’s not going to slip. We’ll finish it of just like regular knot just like you were tying your shoes. So there you go. Now you see how compact the breast is, the breast has come up. Emily: It’s really tightened up. Chef Bogle: Really tightened up and now we’re going to go ahead and tie up the legs so once under this leg. Once under that leg, like I said it can be a little confusing but once you get the hang of it, you’re good to go. Practice on a chicken and you should be good. So cross over, bring the two legs up, cross them, you can hold them right there for me, that’ll be great. So now come back down the sides under the breasts and then we’re just going to dip it and hold that piece of parchment paper down. We’re going to flip it, now we’re going to tie the wings up, same thing. Emily: You want to make sure the wings are really close to the body. Chef Bogle: Exactly, you want everything as close to the body as possible so once again the surgeons knot, two through, tight, another knot we’ll get there. Now we’re going to flip this again, you want to hold that down. We’re going to flip it up we’re going to come up the front. Pop the front of the turkey and then we’re just going over the legs again right here and boom. Emily: And it’s really a nice small little package now. Chef Bogle: There you go. Trim up the excess. Trim it up a little bit. That’s it, now we’re just going to move it to our roasting rack which we have set up over here, half sheet tray with a nice rack underneath through it for roasting. We’re going to roast it at 325 for two and a half to three hours. We’re going to start off by putting a little tin foil on the turkey for the first hour. What the tin foil is going to do is it’s going to create and environment for the turkey to cook in. It’s going to speed up the cooking process within the first hour otherwise you could be here all day. This is just going to create like a little Dutch oven. So we’ll take a piece of foil and just go roll Emily: You also make sure that this doesn’t get too dark right? Chef Bogle: Exactly, you don’t want the initial color in the beginning and then have a raw turkey. Okay so now we’ve had the turkey in the oven for about an hour, 325 degrees, we’ve removed the tin foil. You’re starting to get a little color on the turkey, basting a turkey, you can normally use a regular turkey base use a little of a pan drippings and base it. We go a little further here at Gilt. We like to take a little syringe that you can pick up at a medical supply shop and just a little chicken stock seasoned with a little salt. Just to further enhance the moistness of the turkey and flavor of the turnkey. We’ll put it back in there. We’re going to cook it to 165 degrees Fahrenheit. It is the best temperature for a turkey to avoid any undone turkey. I usually take it to about 155. I’m going to pull it out after it’s done I’m going to rest for 10 minutes, that 10 minutes rest is going to let the turkey relax and it’s going to carry another 10 degrees which is going to bring you to your 165. Okay so now out of the oven, we’ll take that turkey out of the oven nice and roasted, beautiful golden brown. Just put that down for one second and here you go. You got your golden turkey – Emily: It looks beautiful. Chef Bogle: Yeah, it smells beautiful too. Smells delicious we’re just going to let this rest for about 15-20 minutes like I said, we pulled it a little under the carry over heat’s going to take it up to the proper temperature what we want, which we are looking for is 165. we’ll just let it rest go ahead, get he rest of your garnishes ready, get your wine poured and all that and we can go back and carve it up. Emily: Okay great. Chef Bogle, thank you so much for having me. Now I don’t have any more fears about roasting turkey. Chef Bogle: It’s quite simple. Emily: Yes. Stay tuned to Behind the Burner where we give you the tips, tricks and techniques that are lighting the culinary world on fire.