Don’t just wing it. Here’s Danielle Alvarez’s guide to the perfect roast turkey
This lean meat needs a little extra love to turn it into a tender, juicy bird. Here’s how.
You’ve brined and stuffed your turkey and it’s ready for the oven. But first, there’s a crucial step towards a moist and delicious turkey that I suspect gets overlooked by cooks everywhere, and that’s bringing the bird to room temperature before roasting.
To quell your fears, a well-brined, healthy turkey will not spontaneously become infected with unhealthy levels of bacteria in the time it is sitting on your bench waiting to be cooked (although I should say, as per good food safety practice, this period should never extend past 3 hours).
The other misunderstanding is that bringing it to room temperature can happen in 15 minutes. It may take an hour or more to remove that harsh chill from a large bird so it feels just gently cool to the touch.
Pat it very dry before putting it in the roasting pan, on a roasting rack, breast side up. Just before popping it in the oven, brush it with melted butter all over the exterior.
I don’t subscribe to theories about cooking large turkeys breast side down at first, as the thought of flipping a really large hot bird coated in butter sounds dangerous and messy and I will almost certainly tear the beautiful skin, which I want to be intact at the end.
How long should I cook my turkey?
As for oven temperature, I like to start cooking the bird at 180C fan-forced (200C conventional) for about the first 15 minutes and then drop to a medium temperature of 155C fan-forced (175C conventional). A good rule of thumb is you should plan to cook your turkey 12 minutes for every 500g in size. Turkeys usually range from 4-8kg, so this total cooking time can vary from 1.5 hours to 3 hours. You will need a meat thermometer for most accurate results.
“While your bird is roasting, you should baste it with melted butter every 20 minutes or so.”
To test whether it is cooked, measure near (but not at) the bone in the thickest part of the thigh and at the thickest part of the breast. The ideal temperature is 70C.
While your bird is roasting, you should baste it with melted butter every 20 minutes or so. I will melt 200g of butter and tie up “hard herbs” such as thyme and rosemary to use as my basting brush. Feel free to also use a turkey baster or a spoon to scoop up the juices from the pan as it cooks and pour those over the bird.
How long should I rest it for?
Your beautiful roast turkey is out of the oven and it’s looking gorgeous. You must resist the urge to slice the bird for at least 30 minutes but longer if it is closer to 6-8kg.
Just as you took the time to take the chill off your bird before putting it in the oven, you must now pause to let the bird to cool slightly so it goes from being steaming hot to warm to the touch. This allows all those hot juices to redistribute and settle within the meat, rather than on your carving board (although you will have some of those and they should be poured into the gravy), resulting in juicier slices.
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Danielle Alvarez is a chef, recipe writer and host of Good Food Kitchen.