Duck fat turkey recipe

debramhalliday

Has anyone used duck fat instead of the oil for the ultimate turkey breast sous vide recipe? What was your experience? How did you adapt the recipe? Did you love it?

Brandon_Byrd_40557

You can certainly do it, and there's no real need to adapt the recipe (just sub duck fat for oil 1:1). But I prefer to use duck fat on the dark meat, which I tend to shred. Duck fat is flavorful, but the fat and flavor don't really penetrate protein like it does, say, a potato. But if you cook and then shred the protein (like you might do with legs and thighs) then you increase the surface area, and thus the amount of duck-fatty flavor.

On the breast meat for the past several years, I've cooked it in the bag with herb oil, which is delicious on pretty much everything. I actually started doing this before ChefSteps came out with their herb oil recipe, so I felt quite clever when ChefSteps came out with their own recipe/video for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCkeZb6tN-c

I like using the herb oil instead of adding herbs to the bag, in large part because I use a vacuum sealer and herbs can embed themselves into the turkey and ruin the appearance. Plus, digging sprigs of time out of a cooked turkey breast isn't fun. If you use enough herbs when making the oil, the breasts take on a light green hue in the bag (which goes away after searing). I think this yields more flavorful white meat than just using duck fat does.