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Nothing beats a golden-brown, oven-roasted turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. But it does have its drawbacks.
For starters, a stuffed bird takes up valuable real estate in the oven, limiting the number of side dishes you can cook at the same time.
It also can be an exercise in culinary frustration, with the lean breast meat (done at 150 degrees) overcooking long before the dark meat legs (perfect at 165 degrees) are finished roasting. Plus, given the tall-sided shape of a traditional roasting pan, it's really difficult to get the turkey's sides as crispy as the top.
And how much stuffing can you stuff into the actual cavity, anyway? Never enough, which means you have to find room for yet another casserole dish on a lower rack.
If you're willing to go a little nontraditional this holiday, though, and forgo the wonderful smell of a turkey roasting for hours, there's a faster and easier way to get Thanksgiving dinner on the table, with perfectly cooked meat with crisper skin.
All you have to do is spatchcock the bird -- that is, cut out the backbone and flatten it before sticking it into a (very) hot oven.
Here's why it works like magic every time.
When you butterfly a turkey, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt of The Food Lab explains on seriouseats.com, you expose more skin to improve browning.
'With great exposure to heat and plenty of channels for rendering fat to drip away, a butterflied bird gets insanely crisp skin while helping to keep the meat underneath moist, all at the same time,' he notes.
A lower, flatter profile also allows the bird to cook much, much faster at very high heat -- in half the time of a traditional roasted turkey, if not faster. Plan on no more than 90 minutes for a 15-pound bird in a 450-degree oven.
I'm not the only non-traditionalist.
A spatchcocked turkey graces the cover of this month's Bon Appetit and also is among the six 'favorite' Thanksgiving turkey recipes featured in November's Taste of the South magazine. Food stars Martha Stewart and Mark Bittman also swear by the method's reliability.
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Roasted Spatchcocked Turkey Nervous about screwing up? It helps to watch any of the dozens of tutorials on YouTube.com. I did. -- Gretchen McKay
8- to 12-pound turkey
10 or more garlic cloves, lightly crushed
Several sprigs fresh tarragon or thyme or several pinches dried
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil or softened butter
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
Pat turkey dry with paper towels. Put turkey on a stable cutting board, breast side down, and cut out the backbone using kitchen shears or a sharp chef's knife. Make a cut along 1 side of the backbone, starting down near where the thighs meet the tail. Continue cutting, working your way around the thigh joint until you've snipped through every rib bone and completely split the turkey up to the neck
Turn the bird over and press on it HARD to flatten. (You should hear a couple of cracks.) Put it breast side up in a roasting pan that will accommodate it (a slightly snug fit is OK). Tuck wings under the breasts, and the legs should protrude a bit. (I placed it on a rack on a rimmed cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil.)
Tuck the garlic and the herbs under the bird and in the nooks of the wings and legs. Drizzle with the olive oil and sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper.
Roast, basting twice and rotating pan after 40 minutes, until thermometer inserted into the deepest part of the breast registers 150 degrees, and the thighs register at least 165 degrees -- about 80 minutes.
Let the bird rest for a few minutes before carving, then serve with the garlic cloves and pan juices. (Or make turkey gravy.) You also can serve it at room temperature.
To carve: Cut legs from breast, separate drumsticks and thighs, remove wings from breast, then cut breast meat into 2 pieces, slicing along either side of breastbone. Slice the breast meat across the grain and arrange on the platter with the dark meat and wings.
Serves 8 to 10.
-- Adapted from Mark Bittman Entities 0 Name: turkey Count: 5 1 Name: The Food Lab Count: 1 2 Name: Mark Bittman Count: 1 3 Name: Bon Appetit Count: 1 4 Name: Martha Stewart Count: 1 5 Name: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt Count: 1 6 Name: Gretchen McKay Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1ydR4GX Title: Alton Brown's Perfect Roast Turkey for Thanksgiving - Bon Appétit Description: I remember my first turkey. I was 25; it was 20 pounds. I had no idea what I was doing, so I snagged a recipe from a glossy food mag that promised to produce the perfect turkey.
