How To Prepare A Turkey For Roasting

The most talked-about (and stressed about) part of any Thanksgiving meal is usually the main event – the bird. But far from going straight from Defrost to Roast, your turkey depends on the prep work that goes into the bird before it goes into the oven. Chef Jamie Roraback from Lincoln Culinary Institute in Hartford, CT can show you how to prepare a turkey for roasting and add some exciting new flavor to your main course this holiday!

Video Transcription - How to prepare a Turkey

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Hi, I'm Chef Jamie Roraback from the Lincoln Culinary Institute in Hartford Connecticut. A question a lot of people will ask is, how do I just simply roast a turkey? There's a million ways people do it. As a professional chef, though, we don't have an awful lot of time, we want to focus on technique and have a good quality, because we have to make the gravy and the stuffing and everything else.

So anyway, we have a properly thawed turkey, what you want to do is though, in the plastic wrapping that it does have, never cut through the plastic on the top, where the breast is, you're going to ruin the skin. So we always flip it over, so you're now on the back side, so if you do make a little bit of a mistake. So, we're going to just make an incision, slit it open. Notice, I have the turkey also on a tray that allows me to catch any juices, because you don't want to contaminate your kitchen, so I do want to hold this over a tray so you don't get the juices everywhere. So basically we're going to let the turkey come out of its package.

A turkey, whether it's fresh or frozen and thawed, is going to be very moist and very wet. And that's kind of counterproductive when it comes to roasting it properly, so let me show you. What we're going to do is, I'm going to take the neck out first, I'm going to open this up a little bit and you will maybe, depending on how it's packaged, you might find a cute little bag of all kinds of what we call innards. Now you can make very good things out of the livers and so on, so that is an option you do have. But here's what I want to do at this point, I want to get this turkey a little bit more patted dry, so what I'm going to do is just take a large amount of paper towels and really just blot it dry the best we can. The more moisture that's on this, the more highly likelihood you're not going to be roasting your turkey but you're going to be steaming your turkey. Which, you know is a different cooking technique but you're not going to have that typical roasted flavor and you're not going to get the caramelization, so I'm going to really blot this dry very well.

You may notice that there is also a pop up timer. Now there is nothing wrong to use those, in my experimentations though over the years, those pop ups usually don't pop out until about 180 degrees, which means it's probably a little more cooked than you need it to be. So, personally, as a professional, I don't have any need for that, but that's a personal choice. So, I'm going to continue blotting dry. Now, you're going to notice also stuffing a turkey is a common thing. I am not really going to go that route so much today, only because it tends to make the bird roast a little bit more uneven. When you really fill this cavity with stuffing, the heat cannot get in there and really the outside of the turkey cooks before, so as professionals we generally don't stuff it. You can certainly roast your stuffing in a separate pan and use some of the turkey drippings over the stuffing as you bake it in the oven to make it easier. So this will cook quicker, it will cool quicker and be overall a lot safer.

So, let's get it ready now for the oven, now that I've blotted it dry, I'm going to go with a nice roasting pan. So, as a professional what we generally do is simply rub the entire turkey down with either softened butter or in this case I'm using canola oil. What this does is it allows the whole thing to basically have a little bit more of an even color. So we're going to kind of massage it down with the oil or butter. You can get on the back side as well and just make it so it doesn't stick to the rack. If you notice, the roasting pan is a heavy style, and it's a heavy bottom but also, it's an appropriate size so we don't getting any drippings going on there. We have a rack as well which keeps it off the bottom so it doesn't actually sit in it's own juices.

Now, I talked about not stuffing it, but if you do want to promote a little more aroma going on in your kitchen but also in the turkey, sure, I'll put a little bit of herbs in the cavity. So, I happen to have rosemary, thyme, sage, whatever you have, I just picked these from our garden here and they're so fragrant, aromatic. Now, the other thing that we will want to do is go ahead and add a copious amount of kosher salt. Seems like a lot, but I'll tell you, rub it down pretty good with the salt, what you'll get is, basically the salt will start to remove some of the excess moisture in that turkey skin and it will tend to roast a bit nicer and you'll get better quality color. And the skin actually will get moderately crispy, which often isn't the case with turkey. I've left the actual legs crossed together with that plastic they supply for that and that does tend to help maintain a good shape but I think that's perfectly fine to roast in the oven as is.

Now, I would love to just include the neck, the neck I usually just put somewhere down in the roasting pan to roast. That'll help make our gravy a little bit more tasty but I do want to take it out of there so that the heat can get inside and roast very evenly.