Spatchcocked Turkey | Better. Faster. Juicier.

The problem with whole roasting your turkey is, look at this thing, it's all tied up tight into a ball and when it has this round shape, people think that it actually cooks more evenly like this when it's trussed together, but it doesn't. It actually cooks less evenly. So our first step is to cut along the inside of that v-shaped bone called the wishbone at the front of the turkey and remove it and this is going to make it easier to carve later. So that's actually an optional step. Now here's not an optional step. We've got to remove that metal trussing pin. They truss it up like that because supposedly it makes your turkey cook more evenly, but it really doesn't. In fact, trussing it up in a tight ball makes it cook less evenly. So next what we want to do is remove the backbone and the backbone is going to run from the tail to the neck. So you can see me cutting up alongside one side of the backbone here. Now once you get to that leg joint where the thigh joint intersects with the hip or the spine of the turkey, it gets kind of tough. So you really are going to need some sharp kitchen shears and a little bit of hand strength to break through that. So if you need some help just, you know, you can use two hands or get someone to help you. So you want to cut up along one side of the backbone and then the other side to remove the backbone completely. And I'm not going to lie to you, it will take a little bit of strength. It will take a little bit of patience. So just cut up alongside the backbone and take it on out. Now you will see this little bothersome bone sometimes pop up. It's right there behind the wing. Can you see that? So that gets in the way of us laying the turkey flat. So what you want to do is take that bone. You should really be grabbing it with a towel. I don't and I kind of hurt my hand a little bit. But you want to just bend it the way that it doesn't want to bend, right? So you want to break that bone off and then come back behind it where it intersects on the turkey and just cut away. So bending it forward is just going to disjoint that bone. Now we're going to flip the turkey breast side up. Take the wing tips, tuck them back behind the breast and then you want to press down on the breastbone to break it. And what that's going to do is it's going to flatten the turkey even more. So you can see we have even skin exposure all across the turkey. So we're going to get even browning of the skin. Now to enhance that browning, here's a step that a lot of people miss. And this is about one and a half to two gallons of boiling water that I'm just ladling over the top. And when you ladle the water over the top of the skin, you'll see the skin shrink instantly. And what this is doing is it's rendering out a little bit of the fat but more importantly it's breaking down the collagen in the turkey skin. Because that collagen is going to bind to fat and water and you're not going to get crisp brown skin until that collagen is broken down and that fat and water is rendered out. Now once you get the hot water treatment, you're going to dry salt on both sides. And this is going to do the same thing as brining. It's going to allow the turkey to remain more moist during the cooking process, but we're not adding any excess liquid. So it's going to keep our turkey even more flavorful. Now here I'm just salting liberally on both sides with kosher salt. So I'm just giving it a good covering. But if you want to get technical about it, you can weigh your turkey and salt it with one percent salt by weight. Now flip its skin side up and place it uncovered in your fridge overnight. This is going to allow the salt to diffuse into the muscle fibers and the skin to dry for better crisping. Now here I have the backbone that I would normally whack up with a meat cleaver, but that would make too much noise. It's like 11 o'clock at night and it's going to wake my six-year-old daughter who's just a little monster. Not really, she's adorable. But I don't want to wake her up, so I'm just going to break it up silently using a chef's knife. Even though people on YouTube are definitely going to make fun of me for not using a cleaver. All right, so cooking oil at the bottom of the sauce pot here just to brown the chicken back and any other, excuse me, turkey back and any other bones that you have. And then once the bones are brown, we're just going to throw in some mirepoix, kind of stir it around, and then go through our basic stock making process. White wine, water, let it go overnight. Now I have a separate video on making turkey stock and turning that awesome turkey stock into a really awesome turkey gravy. So we're not going to rehash the details here, but suffice it to say you can just let this go overnight, make a nice stock, and the next day you can make a gravy. So now the turkey has been in the fridge for about 12 hours, and this is going to be the minimum that you want. Better results on the skin at 24-48 hours. But you can already see the skin has dried quite a bit. Now at the bottom of this roasting pan, I'm going to just place some water, and this water is going to help to create some steam during the cooking process. Now the steam is better at transferring heat than the dry air of my oven, so it's going to help to cook my turkey faster. And then the skin on the top is exposed to the dry air in the oven, which is going to lead to really nice crisping. So 450 degrees Fahrenheit, and I'm setting an internal probe thermometer to beep at me when it reaches an internal temperature taken from the breast at 150 degrees. Now check this out. 14 pound turkey, an hour and 10 minutes later, my thermometer is beeping at me. Yes, that's right. An hour and 10 minutes later, my thermometer has beeped, and my turkey is done. Look at that baby. It's so gorgeous. It's so pretty. The skin is crispy. Now here we go. So you can see my thermometer. It's now at 162, and this is why we pull at 150. We need to allow at least 15 degrees of carryover cooking, so this turkey is going to rise up in temperature. Now after I've allowed the turkey to rest for about 40 minutes, I'm going to carve. And the internal temperature on this turkey is still pretty high. It's at about 135 degrees Fahrenheit right now. Now those drippings at the bottom of the pan, you can just use those to reinforce the flavor on your gravy. Now check out how easy this is to carve. The leg comes off just by separating the skin and giving it a pull. Other side, one more time. Leg comes off. All right, just give it a pull, separate that skin. Now the wings, you just want to kind of flex the wings forward in the direction they don't want to go, and just cut them behind them. Again, I'm just going to pop that joint to give me a space to put my knife in between, and cut straight through. And because the wings are rather large, I like to just separate them. Again, you're just pulling the wings apart and then cutting through with your knife. It's so nice and juicy at this point, and it's cooked all the way through, that it's going to be really easy to separate all the bones. So again, just pulling the wings apart, and cutting straight through with the knife. Next, you want to remove the breast just by cutting down along one side of the breastbone. And here I'm using a chef's knife. You can use a slicer. A slicer is actually going to be easier. But notice how cleanly that breast comes off, and that's because we removed the wishbone right at the beginning, before we cooked it. So we're not battling with the wishbone there at the top of the turkey. That breast just comes right off. And anytime you are removing a breast meat from a bone, or any meat from a bone, just make sure you're flexing your knife or angling your edge towards the bone. You're going to get maximum yield. Now there you can see I just removed the tender, just because it makes it easier to slice later on. So again, cut down along one side of that breastbone, remove the breast meat, and then pull that tender off. Now I like to flip my breast skin side down when slicing, because then you go through the tender meat first, and then you can cut through the skin and flip it back over for presentation. Now notice how I'm cutting horizontally across the breast. This is because the muscle fibers will run the length of the breast. They run lengthwise. So this shortens those muscle fibers, making the breast even more tender than it already is. Oops, little skin piece for me there. Now that's delicious. Now those tenders can just be cross-cut and added as white meat to your platter. And now it's time to attack the legs. So start by separating the leg from the thigh, and it should cut right through. Just find where those joints connect, and just cut right through that joint. Now underneath the thigh bone is going to be this little plate, and it's basically the hip bone of the turkey. So get your fingers underneath that plate, and it should pull right off. You could use the tip of a paring knife if you need help kind of disconnecting some of that muscle tissue. But at this point, it's cooked really well, so it should pull right off. And then you should be able to take that thigh bone and pull it right out. And see how I'm kind of running my fingers down along that thigh bone? This is going to leave that meat behind. So again, you're pulling off that hip plate and then pulling out that thigh bone. And from here, I like to split that thigh right down the center, because you can kind of see how they're two separate muscles, and then cross-cut just like we did the breast. Again, skin side down just to make it easier to cut through, then flipping it back over for presentation. And then I like to leave the drumsticks whole. Little Scooby snack again. Leave the drumsticks whole because, you know, who doesn't love gnawing on a drumstick? Crazy people have to. So, breast down on the platter. And at this point, you're just lining up all the sliced meat just like little soldiers right there on that platter, and then just garnish with your leg bones, wings, and wing tips. And there you have it. Better, faster, juicier, easier to carve, Spatchcock turkey. Why would you ever want a whole roast of turkey ever again? Unless you really just don't like yourself for some reason. Take it easy on yourself, man. It's the holidays. This episode of Show Notes, with all of our Thanksgiving Day content, can be found at StellaCulinary.com slash CT25.