November 2010

White Wine Butter Turkey

What You'll Need:
PLATINUM Oval Roaster

Ingredients:

Turkey (with or without your choice of stuffing)
1 box or 4 cubes of unsalted creamery butter
1/2 bottle of dry white wine
Salt & Pepper

Cheesecloth
Baster

Directions:

Take everything out of the inside of your turkey (little bag with liver, neck bones etc) Salt & Pepper inside the large cavity which you will stuff later. Boil water in a tea kettle and pour boiling hot water all over your turkey. This will make the skin contract and tighten over the meat of the bird and seal all the juices inside during cooking - hence your turkey will be mouth wateringly juicy!

Melt 2-3 blocks of your butter in a pan and put in a mixing bowl. Slowly mix in 1/2 bottle of dry white wine into bowl with melted butter (sauvignon blanc or pinot grigio is good for this) Take cheesecloth and fold until it is four layers in thickness. Place cheesecloth in butter/wine mixture and allow it to soak up all it can. Salt, Pepper, Shmear some room temperature butter all on outside on skin & stuff your turkey now.

Turn your stove onto a heat BETWEEN medium & high and put oval roaster onto burner Preheat the Oval Roaster and do the water test to see if it's ready to sear the bird. This is the test where you put a little water in your hands, throw it inside the roaster and if the water beads up and dances, the pan is now hot enough to sear in. Sear the turkey breast & leg side down first, then turn it so its back is down and let that side sear as well for 1-2 minutes. Tie the little feet together. Drape cheesecloth over the breast and drumsticks of the bird. Close the Oval Roaster lid and have burner turned to heat level somewhere BETWEEN medium and high.

Once you see spitting coming out of all sides of Oval Roaster, you are ready to turn down the heat. Make sure there's quite a bit of spitting because this means your pan is hot enough to go into vacuum once the heat gets turned down. Before you turn it down though, open the lid and with your baster, soak the cheesecloth again with the wine & butter mixture. Put your lid back on and turn the heat to BETWEEN medium and low. (it is very important not to turn heat all the way low because the bird will not continue to cook - it will only be kept warmed and you want it to continue cooking) Make sure that on that setting that's BETWEEN medium & low, you can still hear a good simmer going on inside of the pan - this means the bird is still simmering/cooking.

You can open it once or twice more at this heat and resoak your cheesecloth with your baster using the butter/wine liquid mix. Just make sure that you do this very quickly so you don't lose much hit, and that when you close your lid the simmer is still going at a good pace. (if after you resoak your cloth your simmer is not going, you may have to turn the heat up for a few minutes and get your spitting action again before you can turn it back down to keep the simmer going)

Time 14 minutes a pound unstuffed or 18 minutes a pound stuffed - Start your timing AFTER you've turned heat down to between medium and low for an approximate ETA of when the Turkey will be cooked. (A 24 pound turkey cooks in about 4 hrs and 20 minutes this way.)

Also, once it's done you can turn your oven to broil and put the whole roaster in the oven (without the lid ofcourse) and brown the top of the bird!

Bon Appetit!