On a recent trip to Chicago, I spent a short time with a friend who is into cooking. I was able to get a sneak peek at her turkey recipe. I wanted to share it with you since it has a pretty funny twist.
The recipe is for a roasted turkey breast that is the result of cooking the bird with the breast cut off, leaving the innards exposed. The result is a moist, flavorful, and delicious turkey. It’s not easy to cook turkey because it’s usually done in a pit and there’s no easy way to cut the breast off.
In fact, I was surprised to find that the turkey recipe actually isn’t that hard to follow. I’ve done this before with other recipes, but I thought it had to be complicated because it was supposed to be done with the breast cut off. Turns out, there were two recipes that the turkey recipe was supposed to be adapted from. The first one was for a skinless turkey, and the second was for a skinless turkey that was roasted and stuffed.
While I was in the kitchen, I realized that in the second recipe, the breast meat is being cut off in the oven. I had assumed that this was a “skin-only” recipe, and I was right. The second recipe calls for “skin-on” turkey. I did not know this and had not noticed this until I started reading the recipe. So in the end, the turkey is actually roasted with the breast cut off.
If you’re really not able to cook a turkey with the breast cut off (because the breast meat is too tough), you could always just make a regular turkey. The only problem with this approach is that the breast meat is still being cut off.
I have to ask, what kind of turkey skin are you making? If you aren’t cooking a skinless turkey, then just cut the breast off, and if you are cooking a skinless turkey, then you could go with the second recipe.
For those who are not familiar with the turkey breast cutting process, it involves first slicing the turkey breast into two halves. Then you run one of the cut halves through a meat grinder with the other half on top. At this point, all the fat and skin on the meat become evenly distributed so you can then slice the turkey into individual slices. Next, you put the sliced turkey in a pan and add the marinade and cover the pan.
Since the turkey, like much of what we eat, is coated in a lot of fat, it is easy to get stuck in the fat. Then you remove the fat and skin from the turkey, but you still have to get a handle on what exactly you’re doing with the fat. The fat has to be removed in a way that you have a chance to eat the turkey whole, without it being too sticky or too dry.
Not only do most turkey recipes I’ve found have the fat removed unevenly, but it’s also difficult to get the fat that’s already in the turkey removed. I often find the fat to have been left in the pan, and this is true of the fat that is also in the turkey.
This is a great example of the turkey recipe being uneven. The fat is removed unevenly because you don’t have the time to get a handle on exactly what you are doing with the fat. The same is true of the fat that is in the turkey.