Before the New Year, I posted the results of my turkey experiments based on J. Kenji López-Alt’s ideas for spatchcocking and baking stone approaches. But for my last experiment, I combined the baking stone with a method I learned from the late Marshall Harrison, owner and chef of a famed Connecticut steak house (and my cousin by marriage). His method was to put the whole bird on a rack over an inch or two of liquid in a tightly covered pan. The pan should be airtight–or at least have a very tightly fitting lid. I bought a good tight-fitting large roasting pan years ago from a restaurant supply company. You heat the oven to 500 degrees, steam the bird, then turn down to 450 and let it brown. Continue reading “Update to the Great Turkey Test”
Tag: j kenji-lopez-alt
The great turkey test
I’ve been using J. Kenji-Lopez-Alt‘s recipes for some time now, since my son told me about the Food Lab and Serious Eats. This year, we had our holiday dinner on Saturday, but some family arrived on Wednesday. It didn’t seem fair that they’d miss all the leftovers, so I decided to make a small turkey on Wednesday, have a couple of days of turkey sandwiches, turkey soup, turkey pot pie, before the big day.
I’ve seen Kenji’s posts about spatchcocking the turkey, cutting the backbone out, flattening it and cooking it splayed on a rack over a cookie sheet. But he also had a post about cooking a whole turkey with a baking steel. Continue reading “The great turkey test”