For Thanksgiving this year I cooked the turkey breasts sous vide, to rave reviews and enthusiastic overconsumption. For years I've been cooking the breasts and legs separately, usually roasting the breats on the bone. Last year for boxing day I also tried an herb-brined smoked turkey breast on the bone, which was excellent. This year for thanksgiving I broke down the turkeys, made stock out of the backs, breastbones, and wings, separated legs and thighs and roasted those, brined the boneless breasts, then cooked them sous vide before finishing under the broiler with plenty of butter. I plan on doing the same next year.
I used boneless breasts from 2 turkeys.
brine overnight, about 15-16 hours
from Ruhlman & Polcyn's Charcuterie:4l water
350g salt
125g sugar
42g pink salt
2 bunches fresh tarragon
5 cloves garlic, crushed with flat of knife
a couple bay leaves
20g black peppercorns
(note for next year: some sage and/or rosemary might be nice)
rinse, dry, & bag each with a hunk of butter then
cook sous vide @ 61C for 3.5 - 4 hours
To
finish, coat with butter and put under broiler, skin side up, until skin is dark brown and crispy.
5 comments:
sounds mouth wateringly delicious. Traci roasted our Wholepaycheck humanely raised, organically fed, $60 dinde in an olive-oil, basil, rosemary rub, in our digital convection jenn air with internal thermometer, and in less than 3 hours, it was "to temperature" internally at 160F, which I held for 3 minutes, and then calibrated with a analogue thermometer and declared "done!". It was the most tender, moistest, flavorful turkey I've ever had. When I went to slice it with a very sharp knife, the breast meat just sort of "fell off" in chunks. I ate the skin which was succulent.
I'd listened to "Science Friday" the week before on NPR, where a bacteriologist said he cooked his at 155F for 15 minutes, but 160F at 3 minutes (internal temp) would kill any turkey borne pathogen. 142... for 3 hours... sous vide.. homogeneously... nice.
Never tried sous vide before... sounds like a great deal of prep work... but apparently well worth it for the tasty results.
Sounds great!
Generally folks giving out advice on pathogens & cooking temps err on the side of caution, which is fine for public health recommendations but I think they overdo it. I've looked at FIS poultry cooking data. Might dig that out and post on it.
Sous vide: generally requires no more or less prep work than cooking anything else, excepting the extra step of filling something with water and turning on the heater/circulator, plus bagging the items, which is a quick operation after the clumsiness of the novice wears off.
So, for the turkey breasts: I used the same brine as I would have were I going to smoke them. But for chicken breasts I've cooked them sous vide with no advance prep whatsoever, and subsequently used them, after chilling in ice water, in a chicken salad.
Another example: a couple months ago we got a large amount of salmon from the fishmonger. The portion we weren't going to use that night we cut into individual filets and vac-bagged them and stuck them in the freezer. The other night, JJ set the water heater to 51C and dropped the frozen salmon straight in. A few hours later, she and the boys had some, just pulled them out, open, served over rice with soy sauce. An hour or so after that I came home, pulled my salmon out, still in the water at 51C, still cooked perfectly, and had a quick and excellent dinner.
On the other end of the scale, when I made brisket chili, it was quite a lot of prep, and cooking sous vide for a few days was only the final step.
FSIS data, that is. FIS is the international ski federation, who have nothing to say on the matter of food pathogens.
totally agreed on the overly-conservative nature of public recommendations. The Sci Fri bacteriologist, when asked by Ira Flato "what do you cook your turkey to?" said "is anyone listening?" Flato "this is public radio, of course not". Bacteriologist "well, I cook mine to 155, but I hold it there for a solid 15 minutes. You need at least 150 to get the worst of the pathogens killed, so I go to 150~155 but I hold it for 15 minutes. 160 for 3 minutes is more than enough to be safe". Note: when I FIRST stuck in the digital thermometer in what I THOUGHT was the thickest part of the bird, it WAS reading 160F, and I calibrated with analog... but then... I stuck it thru the thigh and basically into the deep pelvis, and there it read 139, so in the convection roasting oven it stayed for another 30 minutes until internal pelvis temps got to 160F for 3 mins.
THe bacteriologist also said he separately brines and slow cooks the legs, and roasts the wings by themselves, and the breasts by themselves, but DDF didn't want to proactively dissect, so I was tasked with a "whole bird" cooking method.
Ah, for whole-bird roasts, usually chicken, because I like the legs cooked much more than the white meat, what I often due is cut deep slashes across the drumstick and thigh on each side. Rub butter/oil/satl/pepper/spices/whatehaveyou in there as well. They cook up more quickly and will be at higher temperature than the breast when the breast is done.
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