Stuffed turkey

Up to 3 days before you plan to roast your turkey, it’s a good idea to salt the bird. This has three main benefits; one to add flavour, secondly to tenderise and thirdly, it preserves the meat allowing you to safely plan ahead.

Credit: Danielle Abou Karam

• serves

  12

• prep

  1:30 hour

• cook

  1:30 hour

• difficulty

  Mid

Ingredients

• 1 fresh organic or free-range turkey, about 5 kg  
• 40 g (⅓ cup) sea salt flakes
• ground black pepper
• 4 sprigs thyme
• 8 fresh bay leaves
• 10-12 red onions, peeled and quartered

Turkey stuffing

• 125 ml (½ cup) verjuice
• 40 g (¼ cup) currants
• 100 g unsalted butter
• 3 granny smith apples, peeled, quartered and sliced
• 2 large brown onions, peeled and diced
• 300 g piece pancetta, skin removed, diced
• 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2 tbsp finely chopped thyme leaves
• 600 g plain pork sausage meat
• 250 g fresh breadcrumbs
• 1 cup chopped Italian parsley
• 100 ml extra-virgin olive oil

Standing time: 30 minutes

Marinating time: 1-2 days

Instructions

1. Ask your butcher to bone the turkey or bone it yourself. To do this lie the turkey on a chopping board, breast-side down. Using a sharp knife, cut the skin down along the back bone from the neck to the parson's nose. Cut the flesh away from the carcass on both sides and when you get to the legs and wings, cut through the tendons at the joints. This will mean the wings and legs stay attached to the skin not to the carcass. Pull the carcass off leaving behind the breast flesh.
2. To remove the thigh and leg bones, cut the whole turkey into two halves and place one at a time on the chopping board in front of you. Cut around the leg bone, scraping the flesh away from it. Take out the bones and cut off the wings, reserving all the bones for stock. It’s extremely important to remove the tough gristle in the turkey legs, I find fish tweezers do the job.
3. Lay each turkey half on a work surface, flesh–side up. Slash the leg regions and the breast meat to allow for ease of rolling as well as to give the flesh greater flexibility during the cooking. Gently massage 2 tablespoons of salt into each turkey half, on both the skin and flesh side, once again paying particular attention the potentially tougher regions of the bird around the joints and in particular the brown leg meat. Add a generous grind of black pepper and scatter with the thyme sprigs. Roll up the turkey halves place on a ceramic dish, cover and refrigerate for up to 3 days.
4. For the stuffing, 1-2 days before roasting the turkey, warm the verjuice in a small saucepan or the microwave, pour over the currants and set aside. Melt 25 g butter in a large frying pan over high heat. Add the apples and cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly caramelised. Add the currants and verjuice, simmer until evaporated and the apples are golden. Remove from the heat and set aside.
5. Melt the remaining 75 g butter in a large frying pan over low–medium heat and cook the onions until soft and translucent. Add the pancetta and cook for 5 minutes or until most of the fat has rendered. Stir in the garlic and thyme and cook until fragrant, then add the pork sausage meat and cook for 5 minutes, breaking up any lumps with a spoon until it has lost its raw colour. Turn off the heat and stir through the apples, breadcrumbs and chopped parsley. Season with salt and black pepper. Stand until cool, then refrigerate until ready to use. This will make about 2250 g stuffing and you will need 1.8 kg for the turkey. You can roast the remainder separately or refrigerate for up to 1 week.
6. Preheat the oven to 220°C.
7. To stuff and cook the turkey, lay out each half lengthways, meat-side facing upwards, with the breast meat side closest to you. Spread 900 g cooled stuffing evenly across the entire meat surface of each turkey half, to within 3 cm of the edge furthest away from you.
8. Working one at a time, gently roll up, firmly but not too tightly. Some stuffing may fall out from the ends, but this can be easily pushed back in once you have a firm roll. Take 2 metres of butcher’s twine (any excess can be trimmed or if you require a longer piece just tie some more on). Slip it under one end and firmly tie in a knot at the top. Take the long end and measure 4 cm down the middle of the turkey and hold in place as you would when wrapping a present and gently drag the remaining string under the turkey back to where your finger is and loop through. Pull to straighten and continue doing this until you reach the end of the roll. Turn the roll over and feed the string back down the roll looping it through each band of string as you cross it. You may need to adjust the string as you go ensuring that it remains in a neat pattern providing a more secure finish to the roll. Tie of the end of the string where you started. Slip the bay leaves at intervals along the top of the roll. Repeat with the remaining turkey half.
9. Scatter the quartered onions over the base of a large roasting dish and drizzle with a little oil. Place the rolled turkey halves on top and roast for 20 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 190°C and roast for another 30–40 minutes. To test the meat is cooked, insert a skewer into the centre of each roll and the juices should run clear. Remove from the heat and stand for 30 minutes to rest before slicing. Serve with the roast onions with any resting juices and pan juices poured over the top.

 

Photography by Danielle Abou Karam.

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Cook's Notes

Oven temperatures are for conventional; if using fan-forced (convection), reduce the temperature by 20˚C. | We use Australian tablespoons and cups: 1 teaspoon equals 5 ml; 1 tablespoon equals 20 ml; 1 cup equals 250 ml. | All herbs are fresh (unless specified) and cups are lightly packed. | All vegetables are medium size and peeled, unless specified. | All eggs are 55-60 g, unless specified.