TURKEY, MURCH STYLE
Cook a 6kg plus turkey in 90 minutes???
Quite simply roasting a whole massive turkey is a huge challenge, probably the most expensive single meal most folk cook in a year and hard to get right.
Try to follow this technique for a hopefully stress free cooking experience. Have been cooking turkey like this for over 20 years and every chef I have ever shown this to has adopted it for a perfect cooking method.
This complete technique should be followed one stage at a time, use photos above as a visual reference. Step by step… Honestly it is easy when you see it.
If you follow this cooking method it will also mean you don’t need to get up at 4am to start cooking the turkey…
Turkey technique.
Remove the legs from your turkey, small incision down the side of the breasts and snap back the legs.
Take the breasts off the bone, cut down from the breast bone & try to remove as much flesh as possible
Bone out the legs, this job is a pain but worth doing, remove bone & sinew. Skin side down, follow bone & carefully cut round the bone, take your tine to try to remove as many sinews as possible. This is a faff & should take 10 mins per leg, reform meat and shape into a A4 size piece, set aside.
Make a stuffing by using approx 500g of sausage meat per leg, add sage/bacon or even cooked haggis. For, into a large sausage shape, place in the middle of the leg meat. Carefully roll into a sausage shape. Tie firmly with string allowing 5 pieces of string per leg. Cover your workbench with double layers of cling film. Wet the bench allowing the cling film to stick. Roll the turkey leg in the cling film to form a tight sausage, tie each end and then repeat the process for the other leg and also the breasts. You should have 4 large sausage shapes to place in the fridge.
Why??? Ok, for a number of reasons, it is nigh on impossible to cook at large turkey whole, storage is also difficult. Also this technique allows for the prep to be done in advance. You can also use the bones to make a stock for gravy.
To cook the turkey, simmer the turkey ‘sausages’ in water for 70 minutes, remove from the water and allow to rest for 15 minutes. Remove cling film and roast in a hot oven 190-200c for 15 minutes in butter and olive oil. Season well and carve
Ingredients
Large turkey
1kg of good quality sausage meat
Sage
Smoked bacon
Butter for roasting