Oven roasting is a pitifully inefficient way of cooking a turkey, and can lead to dry, crumbly, bland meat. However, it's the option that most of us will probably plump for over the festive period, with some four million oven thermostat lights blinking on at 1:30pm on Christmas Day.
To ensure your turkey is as tasty as possible, buy the best bird that you can, and follow these tips to ensure everyone will be enjoying succulent meat for the big event and in their Christmas sandwich!
- Brine your turkey overnight in six litres of water and 30g of salt (plus some orange slices and maple syrup for flavour). As salt seeps into the meat, it pulls water with it, plumping up the meat with added moisture, helping to offset the water losses from oven roasting.
- Baste the bird in some goose fat (two tablespoons) mixed with a little baking powder (one teaspoon). Goose fat adds flavour, while baking powder is alkaline, which accelerates the Maillard (browning) reaction, increasing the skin’s tasty crispiness.
- Don’t put the turkey in the oven when the thermostat light flicks off at 180°C. The air will be this temperature, but the walls will be cold. Instead, fully preheat the oven for at least 15 minutes.
- Put the turkey in the roasting tin upside-down for the first half of cooking. Most of the fat is on the underside of the bird, and so will drip down across the blander breast meat as it cooks. Flip over halfway through to help crisp up the top.
- Throw a handful of ice cubes into a baking tray in the bottom of the oven. As the ice cubes evaporate, the humidity in the cooking chamber increases, speeding up the rate that heat passes into the meat, and therefore cutting cooking time by up to half an hour.
- Always use a thermometer. Check temperature 15 minutes before the end. Meat protein will be cooked at 65°C, although food safety advice is to cook to 75°C.
- Rest the turkey for at least 30 minutes before carving. This allows heat from the outer layers to spread into the core, and moisture from the cooler core to diffuse outwards, giving a more even temperature and juiciness, and a meat that doesn’t shred when cut.
Read more about food science:
- Can you feed your brain?
- What happens to your body after eating Christmas dinner?
- Can you cook a turkey by dropping it from a space?