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As described in my Christmas cooking page, we frequently eat turkey for Christmas. This page describes the version I make. My wife Yvonne once made a different version, Turkey with Whisky.
Turkeys are not the easiest dish to prepare:
Turkeys are bred intensively; even big ones are very young. I won't start worrying too much about the methods the breeders use to make them grow so fast, but it's worth noting that in different countries, the typical turkey can be very different in size. In France, for example, it seems that it's possible to get “average” turkeys that weigh less than 3 kg without the innards. In Australia, the very smallest weigh about 4.2 kg.
The smallest turkeys are also the youngest. They tend to have very soft, mushy meat, which is less pleasant to most people.
Turkey breast meat cooks much faster than the legs. If you don't take any precautions, you will end up with overcooked breast, undercooked legs, or both.
Since 2005, I've been refining the following recipe:
Stuff the turkey. This presumably slows down the cooking of the breast meat a little, by cooling from the other side, but that's not the main purpose.
Fill the turkey under the skin with butter and ham:
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Cover the turkey breast with pork fat, and then with aluminium foil:
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Cook the turkey in a fan oven at 180° until until the breast temperature is 70°, then remove it from the oven and remove the aluminium foil.
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This photo was taken a little later, when the temperature had dropped.
Remove the legs and cook them a little more (until about 80°).
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