I'm a fan of Adam Ragusea's turkey cooking method. That method is to give your dark meat a headstart by cooking it on a stovetop (in your roasting pan, if it can take the burners). Basically get the dark meat up to around 130-140 degrees, with the breast still facing up. This way when you stick it in the oven, you can pull your turkey as soon as the breast reaches the right temperature and not worry about your dark meat being undercooked. The skin the the thighs typically end up soggy, but its the the best returns for effort I've had on a turkey.
@@Jenachy I tried it once, took me over an hour to debone it, had no idea what I was doing. Ended up tearing the skin too much on the thighs and I couldnt dry the skin will in the fridge. Its a good method thats useful for saving oven space/time on turkey day, but you gotta know how to debone a turkey.
me: takes break from studying for anatomy and physiology muscles and articulations test because I got frustrated with memorizing everything about muscle tissue minutefoods: immediately talks about muscle tissue filaments me: accidentally learns what I was frustrated with
Before this channel came out, I seriously looked at majoring in something similar in college, but nowhere close to me had a good program. I would love to learn more about the stuff and do it for a living 😭
My mom, and now me, always cook turkey in a poultry bag. Its so easy and works perfectly everytime. I never understood why people complained about turkey being difficult and tasting bad until I had thanksgiving dinner at a friends house. Just throw it in a poultry bag. Trust me
I found a very large, double-walled roasting pan with lid and wire rack at a yard sale in 2005.. its even better than the poultry bags, because the double-walls cause it to radiate heat evenly from all sides. Keep an eye out for one at thrift store or yard sale, you will love it I am sure. The one I got for $3 at a yard sale was listed for over $200 MSRP by the manufacturer, but I didn't know that until a few years later.
@@Isaacrl67 is a great place to work for and I am ready for speaking with you and your family and friends and family members are there in the morning and have a nice day ahead and do it for you to get a good sleep and a good day ahead and do it for you to get a good sleep and a good day ahead and do it for you to get a good sleep and a good ///!!! This was written by Google
40% less water loss does NOT equal 40% more water in your turkey. It's a minor detail, however simply just wrong. This being said. Awsome video! Being a physicist i absolutely love the sciency details about a subject. And your videoes makes me even more fond of cooking than I already am. Keep up the great work!
Not an option for everyone, but I smoked my turkey for the first time last year. That goes hand in hand with cooking it at a low temperature like this video recommends! The only problem I ran into with smoking it was my skin wasn't as crispy as I would like, but that was solved using a short stint in the oven.
I literally just did muscles in biology class, so it was nice hearing about those myofilaments again. I didn’t know heat would squeeze the water off of them! Thanks for that, we didn’t learn that in biology
@@ragnkja you can put it in a very hot oven after poaching and add seasoning to the skin to crisp it up a bit for that extra roast flavour, but personally I drown everything in gravy anyway so I prefer the poached flavour
@@UkDave3856 that's why I think roasted turkey is overrated. People drown it in gravy regardless and gravy covers up flavor but doesn't cover up texture so people will like the tender moist texture but won't notice roast vs poached meat, especially since most people use roasting bags which steam the turkey anyway
As much as I appreciate the aesthetics of a whole roasted bird, cutting up turkey and cook different cuts according to their own characteristics makes so much more sense...
Came here to say that same thing. I've become a great fan of separating the whole breast from the legs/back - start them in the oven at the same time, set to a low-and-slow temp, pull the white meat when it gets done first, let the dark meat take its time to cook to its done point. LOL yeah I miss the glamour of a whole bird - heck, I miss stuffing cooked inside the bird! But I've come to realize all those components do better cooked separately.
Love the little funny face on the chloride ion at 1:43 Reminds me of a Toby Fox sprite, but I can’t place which one The fun little visual gags are one of my favorite things about Minute Thing videos
Thank you so much, I love this video! I'm going to make a video for my channel sometime about the method that my mother-in-law taught me many years ago to cook turkey. It's basically based around what you call dry-brining in this video. I will definitely link to yours; it's a superb explanation of the science!
We talked about this yesterday. WIth how much debate and talk about cooking turkey (For thanksgiving). Given we don't brine. Rather go low and slow for all whole birds (Chicken, duck, goose and turkey). So it was a fun insight to why people brine
Same for my family. Always cooked the turkey in the roaster overnight with a few min in the oven just before serving to let it become that iconic golden brown.
You can also stop cooking your turkey a bit early and let carryover cooking bring it to temp over the next ten to twenty minutes (depending on the size of the bird). Also, the USDA recommendations for meat temperatures are there to instantly kill anything living on or in the meat. You can get the same effect by holding meat at a lower temperature for longer. DON'T eyeball this, and don't rely on the popup thermometer that might have come with your turkey, use a probe thermometer and make sure you're being safe by looking up articles on the subjects of cooking temperature and time prior to cooking to make sure your meat will be safe to eat.
Just a note, holding a lower temp for longer does NOT do the same thing in REGULAR cooking, some have had success in canning but that's still a personal risk decision
@@arouraborialice6577 All of cooking holds risk assessment, it's up to the cook to determine the risks they want to face and accept, including the risk of drying out a piece of meat. If you hold a lower temperature for long enough, it doesn't matter what kind of cooking it is. Temperature and time are variables, change one and you have to change the other to avoid the worst risks. Manner of cooking doesn't change that, though a cook does need to make sure they're cooking the entirety of a piece of meat and not just part of it. This is where education, proper tools, and technique come into play. Unless we're saying two different things and not meaning to, in which case I apologize for the miscommunication.
@@Transubstantiate sweetheart, no, holding a lower temp long enough simply guarantees that you will become ill from the bacteria you are cultivating, this is basic food science and safety. Holding a lower temp means it won't get high enough to kill the bacteria Edit to add, if poultry is 165, holding it at 150 will never fully cook the bird, in case you wanted to keep arguing in favor of bacteria
Don't forget BAGS! Pouch cooking is a simple way to get a perfect turkey. Used it 10 years now without fail. Bacon on top too, but that's a personal preference.
My Grandmother used to baste her turkey, and when I ate it, it literally sucked the fluids from out of my mouth. When I became a teenager, I offered to do the turkey. I used Alton Brown's recipe, which utilizes brining, and I permanently became responsible for the holiday bird.
I have quite literally never had a dry oven turkey with a mustard rub. I don't baste I don't cover I don't brine You just rub your bird in half/half miracle whip and mustard with a lil worcestershire mixed in; then you just add the dry seasoning of your choice ontop. Done. Hell I went 10 degrees over final cook temperature IN THE OVEN this thanksgiving and the bird STILL came out juicy and delicious.
Personally, I am good at cooking turkeys. Always fall-off-the-bone juicy.. my family always insists I cook the bird for Thanksgiving, which makes me smile. I boil the neck and giblets, reduce that broth, then add butter and seasonings. I then inject that into each muscle group of the bird. I then slow roast it all day long in a double-walled roasting pan, basting it often, and finish it off with a honey glaze. I have to get up at 4am on Thanksgiving for all this, but it is so worth it.
Its also important to note that if you brine or dry brine your turkey, you won't be able to use the meat drippings to make gravy as they will be inedible salty, even with a conservative amount of salt in the brine.
It's interesting - I've seen this take a few times in the comments but have been brining for many years and never experienced too-salty drippings! Is this something that you've heard or actually *experienced*? If so, I'd suggest looking again at ratios and brining times.
I've never wet-brined, but the turkey baking method I learned from my mother in law is basically dry-brining, and between she and my wife and I, we've used that recipe for many decades and always used the drippings as the gravy base. Now we also boil the giblets and then use that as the base into which to put the drippings, so maybe that has a diluting effect?
I've been pretty lucky when cooking Thanksgiving turkeys. I have cooked a turkey each year since 2011 or 2012, and only once did I have trouble with the turkey not thawing out properly. I have noticed that there's a fluctuation in how juicy the meat is from one year to the next, but I think that has more to do with the brand than anything else.
My family has always done turkey in an oven bag, but we prepare it in a way that they whole thing turns into a broth with the meat completely separating from the bones and you scoop it out to serve, so dry turkey is unknown here.
Another good idea might be, if you're gonna brine the bird, might as well actually marinate it while you're at it. Add some more interesting flavors and nuances while also keeping the bird moist and flavorful. Full disclosure, I've never had to cook a whole turkey so I'm just spitballing.
While that feels really intuitive, salt is kind of unique in that it can diffuse through meat - most flavorings won't! So while things like lemon, pepper, onion, etc will flavor the *outside*, they won't permeate into the turkey.
@@MinuteFood Marinade injectors are amazing. I don't brine, but I use broth made from boiling the neck down and inject that into the muscles.. so so juicy without being salty at all. to be fair, I have family members with salt restrictions, so I really couldn't use a brine if I wanted to without excluding them.
What about adding a cup of water in the oven to increase the moisture in the air of the oven? Would that reduce the loss of water in the poultry? If so, how does it compare to the brine or dry brine method?
Is there no oven that prevent moisture from leaking out? There's the pressure cookstove but there's no pressurised oven? I mean, it will save energy, prevent food from drying out, and it cook from all sides evenly. The closest I could think is cooking an egg by closing the lid, because you will have a nice egg if you keep all the moisture, oil, and heat in the pan with the egg.
I had found a nice wet brine recipe for chicken that I use for turkey too. 1/4 cup flaky kosher salt to 4 cups of water and brine the meat for 45min to an hour. Don't leave it in longer as it can get too salty.
The best tasting turkey I've had was from Adam ragusea's video where he fully debones the turkey a day or two before cooking. The bird cooks fast and it's very easy to cut up and eat. You can make gravy beforehand too. The only downside is you can't make stuffing, but instead dressing.
The most important thing to remember is that carry over cooking is a thing AND that you should rest any meat before cutting it. You can also orient the turkey so that the legs are at the back of the oven. The minimum change you can do is still to just remember to take your turkey out 5 to 10 degrees (F) before the target internal temp is reached and let it sit on the counter undisturbed for 30minutes under foil before cutting into it. It's literally less work if not the exact same amount of work as stressing about it being over cooked and overcooking it because you're stressed about it.
I have made a turkey successfully for years I don't understand what the real question was but I'm going to watch it anyway because Maybe you know something new about turkey preparation 🤔
I love making turkey as a holiday meal, but that's because my mother-in-law taught me to make it well and I have it dialed in. Ham absolutely has many advantages. It's much more forgiving in terms of cooking time and technique, and it probably is amenable to a much wider range of spice level. It's much easier to scale up for a large gathering. But a well roasted turkey by somebody who's good at it is absolutely divine.
Curious it might also be a good idea to "scorch" then "sizzle". Very high heat at first to get the outside nice and toasty, then reduce heat for a longer period of time.
It... really isn't hard to cook turkey to make it moist. Open it, put in whatever stuffing you're going to use, then put it in a turkey cook bag with whatever amount of water or gravy that it calls for on the package. Honestly, we just use water and do the gravy separate, if at all, and the turkey is moist for a couple days in the fridge even, though if you reheat it in the microwave or oven, you're going to want to soak it in water for it to absorb.
Note that stuffing a turkey isn't really recommended by food safety experts. By filling the central cavity, you decrease airflow to the center and greatly increase the likelihood that parts of the bird, or the stuffing itself, won't be able to reach a safe temperature by the time the rest of the bird is cooked. You either end up with undercooked, unsafe meat or stuffing, or you have to overcook the rest of the bird to compensate. It's generally recommended to just cook the stuffing separately. Also, if you use a wider, shallower dish to cook it, you can end up with a greater quanitity of crispy stuffing too, which some people prefer, or you can use a smaller but deeper dish to keep it more moist. Either way, cooking it separately lets you make much more of it which is usually appreciated. People who do stuff their birds often cook some stuffing separately anyways for this very reason.
@@cebo494 with the bag method, it just cooks long enough not to matter, without anywhere for the moisture to go. It just soaks back in. Though the stuffing is usually a mixture of corn, broccoli, and carrots, so that may make a difference by creating a pocket deeper in the bird. If you're meaning breading, then yes, that should be cooked separately.
@@mixofreak What I'm saying is that any method of cooking from the outside in, which a bag likely falls under, shouldn't be combined with putting anything in the cavity. You are restricting heat transfer to the center. If the results are good enough for you, then by all means keep doing it, but just make sure that the coldest part of the bird and the stuffing are reaching 165f (74c). If you can do that without overcooking the white meat by using a bag, then go for it. But stuffing (with anything) is just generally a bad practice.
It's worth noting that brining can result in drippings that are too salty to make a good gravy. Gravy can be the moisture for your turkey, and tastes way better imo.
I've seen this take a few times in the comments but it's never something that's happened to me (despite a lot of brining)...is this something that you've heard or actually *experienced*? If so, I'd suggest looking again at ratios and brining times.
So here some advice natural turkey is expensive so if you get pre brined put flavor with the salt ( 1 cup kosher or half table ) rosemary, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, and spices with out salt. Boil mixture with 10 cups of water let it cool add another ten cup water have pot or something big enough for turkey and mixture let it marinate over night. Rinse off lightly for the extra salt, let air dry in your fridge or pat dry when cooking place under the turkey carrots celery and onion and there you go 😅 always will moist and tasteful
If I dry brine, should I wash of the excess salt before continuing to prepare it or do I have keep a close look on how much salt I'm using for the brine not to oversalt it?
Unless you're going for the whole Norman Rockwell look, it's much easier to cook turkey if it's spatchcocked, or better yet, separated into parts before cooking. You can put the dark meat into the oven first and let it cook for a while before the white meat goes in.
My mother's procedure is: Partially defrost it (water only). Wash the turkey and remove the inside bag. Pierce most of the meat except the belly. Finish thawing with brine overnight. Drain and put on tray to drain excess water. Rub with lots of key lime juice (like 1/2 cup freshly squeezed) both on the inside and outside. Let it rest while prepare rubbing spice mix (garlic, cumin, salt, pepper, vinegar, oil). Rub again inside and outside. Let it rest again (lie 4 hours), while preparing stuffing. Once done and closed, put on tray covered with aluminum paper in preheated oven (400°F). Turkey is done when the leg skin retreats. Remove aluminum paper and let it brown. Turn it around so the bottom can brown too. Done.
@MinuteFood I don't mean any disrespect. Brine: Noun - water strongly impregnated with salt. Verb - soak or preserve in salty water. Dry Brine? Stop using this term. There is a perfectly good term already for salt without water - it's called Salt. Verb - Salting Salt your Turkey.
I prefer to bone and butterfly the turkey. Then it only needs to be cooked for about 90 minutes, so it doesn't dry out. Since it lays flat and has no bones, its a breeze to carve.
another issue is that turkey is lean, it does not have as much fat to baste itself as it cooks as duck meat for example. The method of cooking is also a key factor, as most turkeys are cooked in an oven which circulates really hot, dry air that is good for roasting and baking, but not for cooking lean meat for long extended periods of time. Protein is a fickle attribute of food and it truly has to be understood how it works to make sure meat can be cooked at a safe temp while still being both juicy, tender and delicious
What we did is to prick the turkey 🦃 just like we did to roast pork 🐷 while we marinade it with spices and salt to retain moisture and to get the flavors inside the meat ....
Put the turkey in a roasting tray on the burner for ~30 minutes. This lets the legs & thighs get a headstart on cooking, which is good because they're much better cooked to a higher internal temp than breast meat
I would like to kow, how the information on the nutrition table is found out. Like how do you find out how much calories or protein are in something like meat?
I tried to link you to the FDA page explaining it, but it looks like RU-vid deleted my comment for having a link. The answer is they sample the food items and send them to labs for testing. They then use that data as a baseline and calculate the nutrition facts based on weights. In other industries, they would list a 'tolerance' which defines how much you can expect the actual received product to deviate from the listed rating, but nutrition facts don't need to be as exact as say the rating of a capacitor or the purity of a lab chemical. If you want the in-depth answer, look up "FDA - Guidance for Industry: Guide for Developing and Using Data Bases for Nutrition Labeling"
2:10 cutting moisture loss by 40% doesn't mean 40% more moisture. if the base moisture loss is 25%, then after the loss decrease, you're only losing 15%, which is a change of retained water from 75% to 85%, which is a proportional increase of only 13% more moisture.
It is tho. Just not in the way you are thinking. Its not making it 40 % more moist than before, it makes is 40 % more moist than regular brine free cooking.
My tip: Cook your bird breast-side down. All the fat will drain into the breast and it'll be juicier than if you cooked breast-side-up. It won't be pretty, but it'll taste yummy.
That's what I was going to write. My mother was a terrible cook, but her sister was an excellent cook and this was one of the few cooking tips that my mother learned from her. The theory is that the Earth's gravity pulls the juices from the top side of the turkey into the bottom side, so with breast-side-down gravity pulls the juices into the breast meat instead of out of the breast meat. (And basting becomes unnecessary.) I also cook at a lower temperature for a longer time. I'd like to know why nearly everyone recommends breast-side-up. I assume it's for aesthetic reasons, because with breast-side-down the weight of the turkey presses on the breast meat, which could produce a flat spot or ridges depending on what the turkey is sitting on while it's cooking. (I usually cover the roasting pan with chunks of carrots, so the turkey sits on the carrots.) But I think most people would agree that taste is much more important than aesthetics.
And whats with making the air wetter? From a physics standpoint, wet air can take less water. I know that there are products that steam a turkey from the inside and this should even decrease cooking time. It kinda makes sense. With steam all around, not much can evaporate and water needs to condense but due to the heat, its too hot.
Given my high blood pressure, I'm not adding salt to my meats. I'd rather just cook it slowly and carefully with lots of basting, or better yet just stick to chicken which is easier to keep moist.
I was so confused by the timing of this video; since Thanksgiving was a month ago!... but then I remembered that this is an American channel, and I live in Canada lol
Wet brining turkey makes it super soggy. Most people prefer crispier but soft turkey. Best way to do this is just cover outside and inside of your turkey with vegetable oil. It helps keep moisture inside while mantaining crispy flavor
@@shrimpshufflr7745 i respect your opinion on cooking turkey without oil. But not every opinion is good. If you dont like vegetable oil, you can use butter just like gordon did. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dJZeAAs2V2c.html jump to 2.15
In all honesty, this is why we never did turkey at our holidays. We always did ham or Cornish Hens, more control in the hens and less drying out in the ham
Turkey is hard to dial in and get right. Ham is much more forgiving in a lot of ways, I agree, and is a much better dish for many circumstances. But a correctly-done turkey is absolutely divine.
If I read the scale correctly at 1:00, I believe that a good solution for the best-ever turkey could be sous-vide @75°C for a long, LONG time. Did anyone tried that? And would you torch the bird after to get a semblant of a crispy skin?
I'd be concerned with the risk of letting the turkey sit at dangerous temperatures too long if you try to sous vide it like that. You need to get it past 140°F/60°C all the way through quicker than about 2 hours. I dunno if you could get a whole bird up to temp in time without breaking it down into smaller pieces.
So, why not just combine tip 1 and tip 2? In fact, go a step further; start with a just salt dry brine to help draw out the liquids in it. Then pat it dry and wet brine it, if you rly wanna maximise flavour you cud even wet brine it in a stock of some kind even just a rich mushroom or vegetable stock wud be grt but ofc a turkey or other fowl stock may be ideal. And then once done with a wet brine, dry brine it for a bit before cookin. You will have a turkey that has absorbed far more flavour from things and gotten juicier and yet will have a drier exterior which will give a nice difference of flavours and textures across each slice of meat. And baste it frequently durin cookin, with a flavourful sauce, if you wanna also get back the juicier aspects with a dry brine exterior.
The juiciest turkey I ever had was cooked in an electric roaster. I'm sure we didn't brine it, and my guess, based on the info in this video is that it was a low heat roast. But also, I suspect the lid on the roaster kept steam in and therefore the water in the bird wasn't able to evaporate as easily once the humidity rose enough. In any case, there was no carving necessary either as the meat practically fell off the bones. And it was delicious.
The classical Norman Rockwell turkey is a fussy piece of art crafted with limited equipment. A panful of turkey meat pieces is what sings to me. This is how I always saw it presented at church pot lucks. And this requires no art, only a closed roasting vessel.
Actually salt (and water) are pretty unique in their ability to diffuse through meat - most molecules won't! So while other flavorings will help season the outside of the turkey, they won't do anything to flavor the vast majority of the meat.
I gave up eating, Chicken And Turkey, Because for some reason every time I buy them and try to eat them, They taste Vile with a weird flavor, No idea why though...💯 🤷♀🐔
Just break the turkey down when it'd raw. You can cook the different parts of the bird to their required temperatures and pull them out when necessary. Take a few chickens of practice but once you got it, turkey is easy peezy
I always take two peices of what we in Danish call svine spæk (i don’t know what its called in english) and put it on the breast and drizzle it with the drippings during the cooking and remove the spæk during the final stages to get the skin browned
