The Turkey Misadventure

I don't eat a lot of turkey, except MAYBE at Thanksgiving. At Christmas, my family usually does some kind of roast (roast beef, roasted leg of lamb, etc.). Furthermore, I've never been the kind of person who sees turkey as an exciting substitute for chicken, or likes turkey burgers. I've never even tried turkey bacon (can anyone who has tried both tell me if it tastes remotely similar to the real thing?). Nevertheless, one of my recent goals has been to learn to cook non-holiday turkey. This of course means cooking a turkey part, rather than the whole bird, and my first project was to master the turkey breast.

By the way, I'm sorry for all the random rotation on my images. I can't figure out how to fix it yet.

For the prep
I spent: $10
Ingredients: 2.5/5
Before I moved, I could never find bone-in turkey breast at the store. After I moved, I was able to find it, but the truth is, most supermarkets don't seem to always have it. This is probably because most people like boneless meat these days (it's getting harder to find bone-in chicken breast too). Then I went to the farmer's market on Saturday (one of my favourite places to visit back home AND in Toronto) and l0 and behold: turkey breast! Everywhere! With the bone-in, and of the 5-6 lb variety described in the book! But, I did have to go out of my way to find it in abundance. Furthermore, it was the most expensive item by far: over $7 for a piece that was about 700 g.
Everything else was pretty easy to find except all-spice berries. In the end I gave up and just used ground allspice.

Cooking
I used the recipe from foodie Ted Allen's book, "The Food You Want To Eat". I adore this book, mostly because I adore Ted Allen (B can attest to my squeals of joy anytime he appears on the Food Network). I didn't make the chutney he recommended with the recipe, but I followed the brining procedures. I halved his recipe, because my turkey breast was less than 2 lbs, and the recipe was recommended for up to 6 lbs.

You'll need:
Water
1/4 c. salt
1/4 c. honey
half a head of garlic
3 sprigs fresh thyme (which I didn't have so I used dried rosemary)
2 bay leaves
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp allspice berries (which I substituted with ground allspice)
1/4 c. white wine
1/4 c. celery leaves (I plucked them off the celery I had in the fridge)
1 tbsp margarine/butter
Your turkey breast

The first step is to brine the turkey breast. People have told me about brining and the wonders it's supposed to do for meat texture and flavour, so I've really been wanting to try this out.

Take your salt, thyme, bay leaves, peppercorns, allspice, garlic, and honey and combine them in a small saucepan. I couldn't figure out if I should take the peel off the garlic or not, so I left it on. Add enough water to cover halfway up the garlic. Bring the mixture to a simmer, stirring to dissolve the salt.
This was where I went wrong first. When I made the brine, it was 11 PM, and I was dead tired. Without reading the recipe I added the wine to the mixture at this point. Don't do this, the flavours changes just slightly, and it makes your kitchen (and in my case, the entire apartment) smell like fermenting alcohol. Also, keep an eye on your mixture. Mine didn't slowly start to simmer and then come to a happy roll: I turned around to put away the honey, and when I looked back an unhappy brown froth was threatening the edge of my pot. Bad news. It looked and smelled weird.


Stick the pot into the fridge, let it cool for about 30 minutes. The book recommends using ice cubes to help the process, but I have no ice tray to make ice cubes, so I just left in the fridge for a little longer. Meanwhile, take your turkey breast and fit it snugly into a large pot or bowl. Pour your chilled mixture over it. Add the celery leaves and wine. Add enough cold water so that it covers the meat. Put it into the fridge overnight.

When you're ready to cook the turkey the next day, take it out and dry it a little. Pre-heat your oven to 400 F. Brush or spoon the 1 tbsp of margarine (melted) over the skin and put it in a V-rack in a pan. A V-rack is an adjustable metal rack shaped, surprise surprise, like a V that you can buy at most department stores; it's shape holds up whatever you're cooking and allows the grease and fat to drip off the meat and into the pan below. For this reason, don't forget to line your pan with some foil for easy clean up.

Here's where things got tricky for me. The recipe was for a big piece of meat; mine was almost 3 times smaller than the cited bird, so obviously I would need to make some changes. No one cooked turkey exactly the way Ted Allen does, so the internet was no help. This is actually the second time I've tried this and the first time I overcooked the thing. This time, under my dad's advice, I stuck the bird in for 10 minutes at 400 F to sear the skin. At this point I set off my fire alarm, probably because the grease was smoking in the oven and had filled my apartment. This resulted in frantically opening the window (thankfully it wasn't too cold out) and fanning the alarm.
I reduced the temperature to 350 F and cooked for another 20 minutes. This was not sufficient: the meat near the bone was not cooked. I stuck it in for another 10 minutes, but even so, I ended up eating the meat further from the bone and saving the bone and residual meat for soup and pasta. Also, the skin didn't crisp up the way I hoped.


I also discovered I have NO IDEA how to carve turkey breast. There seems to be no logic in getting nice, even slices, especially with that bone in the way. My efforts are so laughable, I have not even provided you with a picture of my finished result. I also really hope I didn't give myself salmonella.

The Result
Based on what I had been told, I was really expecting more pizazz from the brining. The flavours were nice, but nothing mind blowing. The turkey seemed moist, and is probably protected a little from overcooking due to the brining, but at the same time, if you know what you're doing you should be able to come up with moist meat anyways, right? I'll take my dad's Thanksgiving turkey over my meagre attempts to date. In the future, I might keep the temperature at 400 F for 15 minutes and cook for 25-30 minutes at 350 F after that.

Guilt factor: Low. Turkey is relatively good for you, the breast is white meat. I had it with some garlic dill mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli with Parmesan cheese.
Servings: Close to 2 lbs of meat is A LOT for one person. I'm going to say 3 for the size of breast I used; I did only eat one serving of the breast though and relegated the rest to pasta later on.
Leftover rating: 3.5/5. Unless you're planning to save the rest of your sides to keep along for second meals, it's hard. You could always make turkey sandwiches though!
Taste: 3/5

Overall: 75%

The good: Healthy, easy day-of cooking.

The bad: Requires day-before prepping (although it is easy), flavours aren't super great, turkey breast a little hard to find. Here, at least.