There are so many sensory delights to appreciate in a perfect turkey. The skin has a consistent golden brown hue and a crisp texture. The breast meat is tender and juicy while the dark meat is succulent and toothsome. The aroma should be rich and intoxicating. It fills the kitchen with a scent that evokes memories of Thanksgiving or holiday feasts.
Brining is an option many cooks exercise, though we don’t do it every time we roast a turkey. When we do, a couple of our favorite concoctions include:
- Salt
- Sugar
- Paprika
- Granulated Garlic
- Granulated Onion
- Peppercorns
- Aromatics (Onion, Carrot, Celery)
- Thyme
- Rosemary
- Italian Parsley
- Bay Leaves
- Water
The benefit of brining a turkey is to impart additional flavor to the bird and to add moisture. Of course, if you cook a turkey correctly, brining is unnecessary! No brining or stuffing was done for these turkey tests. While stuffing a turkey may be a tried and true part of cooking a Thanksgiving feast for many, we discourage the practice. In order to get the stuffing inside the bird to a safe endpoint temperature, you risk sacrificing the moistness of the white meat by overcooking it.
Perfect Turkey Test
First, we roasted a 10 lb. turkey in a CVap Cook and Hold Oven with the Food Temperature set at 190°F, Browning Level at 8 (new CVap 190°F Vapor Temp/290°F Air Temp), and we cooked it for three hours with Constant Cook ON.
For our next test, we cooked a bird at 180°F with a Browning level of 6 (new CVap 180°F Vapor Temp/230°F Air Temp) for five hours with Constant Cook ON. As you can see, this test yielded skin that was not as brown or quite as crisp as the other test.
An alternative suggestion might be to cook a turkey at 175°F + 0 (new CVap 175°F Vapor Temp/175°F Air Temp) to end point doneness and then either flash fry or flash roast it to brown and crisp up the skin. Using this method will yield extremely tender and juicy meat.
No matter which of these methods you use, the moral to this story is that a perfectly cooked turkey is something to be very thankful for!
