How To Carve A Turkey
There’s a real art to properly carving a turkey – from the way you hold the knife to the order in which you remove the different sections, it all affects how your turkey looks and tastes when you bring it to your holiday table. Let Chef Jamie Roraback from Lincoln Culinary Institute in Hartford, CT show you how to carve a turkey: slice and dice your bird to achieve maximum flavor while looking like a pro!
Video Transcription - How To Carve A Turkey
(Video transcription provided by Speechpad)
Okay, so this turkey has now sat for at least 15 or 20 minutes out of the oven, even a half hour would be better. It has carried over to its final temperature of 165 degrees, which is appropriate for poultry products. What we're going to do is a little bit of Perpetual Chef way of carving this. We tend to do this mostly in back of the kitchen so it's a little bit different. But our goal first is to get rid of the wing. So what I do is I flip it over and take the wings and you kind of pull them back a little bit and you want to get to that knuckle, that joint. And when you pull on it a little bit you'll find a point where the ball joint is. So you can separate it at that point and separate it and you've got a wing now separated from the carcass. So you're going to do that to the other side. Pull back, crack it a little bit, off comes the wing. You got that ball joint.
Now we're going to flip it back over. We're going to now take off the leg and thigh in one piece. So we're going to separate between the leg and the breast. So you're just kind of getting through that skin, trying to preserve the skin. And just get your small boning knife through there is really the best way of doing this. And continue down to the point where you're starting to feel the thigh bone. And there is basically a point where you need to separate this, so we're going to crack it, we're going to pull that joint out. And we're going to now just continue down and get all the thigh meat off pretty quickly. And now you have the ability to separate the leg and thigh from the carcass. So just a little bit further, a little more work and you've got it off in one shot. Okay, so that's one section. You've got wings.
Now, you would repeat that for the other side, but I'm just going to proceed right along and start with the breast. The breast, obviously there are two sections to it, there's a bone going down the center. We're going to draw a line right near the center. We're going to go from the tail to the tip, all the way to the back. So we've got a nice line and I'm going as far as I can, being stopped by the carcass. Now, we're going to do a little bit of surgery and get this breast off in one piece. So what we're going to do is get in there with the tip of your knife and start to work it off. You've got to follow the bone because you're going to have some bone that's going to be in the way. So as you peel it away, and it might be hot but the gloves do protect you a little bit, basically you can get that breast off in one nice piece. Okay, so this is a lot different from how we do it in the dining room but when you're finished the results are really quite nice. So now you've got a beautiful breast. You've got some skin still intact, that's a good thing.
Okay, so now, although I always hated them for years, one of the best way of cutting your breast meat is actually utilizing one of these electric knives. You have a higher likelihood of getting the skin to stay intact. So let's cut this on a little bit of an angle to the point where you're separated. We're going to keep doing that. Fairly thin, maybe about a third of an inch thick or so. And we're going to keep on going for that entire breast. This is about a 12 pound turkey. It wasn't too, too big. Okay? Now, if you don't do the electric knife thing, there is nothing wrong with using a regular slicer. So you can certainly do the same angle, nice long slices. Just make sure you are cutting all the way through, but really what you want to do is try to preserve the skin intact so each slice has a little bit of the skin and then your guests can decide if they want it or not. But boy, the skin actually came out crisp because of that salt we rubbed down on the turkey which helped remove the moisture and allowed it to get very, very crisp indeed.
So let's go to a little presentation here. We're going to take this turkey breast, I'm going to use my long slicing knife, I'm going to go ahead and just place it on the platter. You could open it up a little bit. You can kind of see the nice doneness. There is moisture level in there, that's all what we want. And I wouldn't at all hesitate to present some of the thigh and the leg. So usually with the thigh, with the gloves on, I will just sort of break it up into pieces. I'll get rid of the bone, but people that want the dark meat certainly can go off in that direction. And then I love just presenting the leg, as is. So sometimes small children like that, it's easy to pick up, that's always really good. Let's go ahead and finish the platter, though.
We'll go ahead and add a little bit of garnishment to it. I have some beautiful baby green beans nicely cooked in the Julia Child way. We have some baby carrots. You can place a few of these for color, so it's always a really nice thing. Make sure they're properly cooked and seasoned. And we can finish the plate with the beautiful herbs that we originally stuffed in this turkey from the beginning. We did rosemary, sage and thyme. And again, your stuffing, we didn't stuff this turkey, you would want to cook it in a separate casserole dish. Use some of the turkey drippings to give it flavor as you go. But that is a nice presentation. You can see the nice slices. You can bring that out to the dining room. You can serve your gravy either as a separate urn or right when you get to the dining room you can give it one last adornment and just put a little bit of a ladle of gravy over it, give things a little bit of a shine. To me, that is a great, great way to begin your meal.
From the Lincoln Culinary Institute in Hartford Connecticut, I'm Chef Jaime Roraback. Thank you very, very much for watching. Remember, you can be a chef yourself with some confidence and dedication and passion and overall take pride in what you do. Thank you very much for watching.