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Method - Cooking a Whole Turkey Sous Vide

ParkerCook_66639

I've been planning out what I'd like to do with my Polyscience once it gets here in April (seriously, the longest 3 weeks of my life) and turkey keeps coming to mind because I have one sitting in our freezer at home. The only recipe/technique I've found with specific time/temperatures online for sous-vide turkey says to break down the turkey into white and dark meat sections and cook them separately at different temperatures. The dark meat at 176F/80C for 8-10 hours and then the white meat at 140F/60C for 2-1/2 hours. It seems like a good plan but I just wanted to put it up for discussion and see what everyone else has done or would do with a whole turkey.

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Brendan_Lee_56950

Either way you slice it (see what I did there), your going to have to break it down since bagging a whole bird isn't going to happen. I personally would separate the skin from the bird and cook it into super crispy sheets. And I think cooking the legs and frying them would be super delicious. I love deep fried turkey but it always dries out since it takes so damned long to cook but with the SV first it would be sublime.

seijoed

Yes, you want to break up the bird - you'll need those different times, it takes far longer to cook a leg / joint than it does a breast.

You'll also get uniform perfect meat. 80C sounds very high to me. I'd go somewhere around 65C and just increase the dark meat time.

Then finish in a deep fryer. Crisp, juicy, tender.

Breast should be around 1h, the dark pieces somewhere around 4-8.

ParkerCook_66639

So basically preheat the bath to 65C, put the dark meat in for 4-8 hours and throw the breasts in for the last hour of cooking time. Awesome; the easiest turkey I've ever cooked! @Johan, would you leave the skin on during the cook or do what @Brendan suggested and take the skin off to crisp separately?

seijoed

I pretty much always do skin off on breast, if you deep fry the legs a little longer you should get nice crisp skin - dark brown and a little bit like county fair smoked legs, just much juicier.

Poultry skin in general is hard since it moves.

Deep fried I think it'll work just fine on breast too. It is just that it tends to come off anyways.

Tim_Sutherland_52834

Check out Cooking Issues to see how Dave Arnold SV a whole turkey a few years ago.

http://www.cookingissues.com/2009/11/25/turkey-time-part-3-how-to-cook-it/

seijoed

That Kerosene dragon is epic.

Slightly "complicated" preparation

ParkerCook_66639

Yeah, that's a little complex for me. . . Thanks though @Tim!

jeff_51656

I did this for thanksgiving and used Michael Voltaggio's recipe as a starting point, along with general times and temperatures found elsewhere. Worth checking out. http://www.williams-sonoma.com/recipe/voltaggios-sous-vide-turkey.html

I ended up finishing it on a very hot charcoal grill.