Sous Vide Turkey - Best. Thanksgiving. Ever.

Prep Time: 45 minutes

Cook Time: ~24 hours

Yield:  Varies based on size of turkey

What’s up everybody welcome back to the Project Reboot kitchen. Well, it’s almost Thanksgiving and that means that some of you have the unenviable job of cooking the Thanksgiving turkey. And I say unenviable because as most of you know who have ever borne the mantle of having to be the bearer of the turkey, it’s almost impossible to cook a perfect bird. Most times the white meat comes out dry and almost inedible or if you get the white meat perfect, then the dark meat still has a few hours to go.

Now if this has happened to you before, fear not! Because just in time for the holidays we’re bringing you a foolproof recipe that will give you the most glistening and moist white meat you’ve ever tasted while simultaneously ensuring that the dark meat is coked to utter perfection

How is this possible, you ask? Well it’s all thanks to the magic of sous vide.

Ingredients

1 whole turkey

1 package fresh thyme

1 package fresh rosemary

1 package fresh sage

2 tbsp avocado oil

salt

Instructions

All right, so before we get started, let’s make sure we’ve got everything we need to make a Thanksgiving turkey that your family will be talking about for years to come. 

As far as ingredients go, this one is pretty simple. We’ll start with the turkey, of course. Then we’ll need some salt and herbs. You see that I’ve got the full salvo of Thanksgiving herbs here - rosemary, thyme and sage. Other than that, we’ll just need a little bit of oil to help us get that turkey skin extra crispy and delicious.

Since we’re cooking sous vide, we’ll also need a couple of tools. First and foremost, we’ll need a sous vide circulator and a vessel to serve as the water bath. I’ve got an Anova Nano circulator here and a large tub that I got off of Amazon. As far as sous vide circulators go, I’ve really been enjoying the Anova Nano. It’s solidly made, small enough to fit in a drawer and super simple to use. And at under a hundred bucks, it’s an investment that’s easy to justify considering that it helps you to get restaurant quality results every single time.

Now if you don’t have a tub like this one, you can go ahead and just use a large pot and that’ll work just fine.

Finally, we’re going to be breaking out our trusty cast iron skillet to help us sear our turkey and achieve an absolutely beautiful, crispy golden brown skin.

Now, the secret to perfectly cooked turkey is to cook the white meat and the dark meat at different temperatures. In order to do that, you’ll need to carve your bird into sections so we can pack and cook them separately.

Before we start slicing, let’s make sure we’re starting with a razor sharp knife. Here, I’m using a Japanese chef’s knife. Japanese knives are known for their sharpness, which should help us to make quick work of this bird. I’m going to make sure that I’m starting with a sharp edge by giving my knife a couple of passes through this hand held sharpener. It’s not the most precise way to sharpen your knife, but it’s quick and will be just fine for our purposes today.

After I’ve run the blade through around 20 times on each side, I’m going to take a damp cloth and clean up the excess metal that came off the edge of the knife. Next, I’ll test the edge by slicing through a sheet of paper. If it cuts through with little resistance without snagging, we know we’re dealing with a seriously sharp knife.

I’ll start breaking down the bird by removing the legs. Similar to breaking down a chicken, we’ll start here, just behind the thigh and slice through the skin. I’ll pull on the leg to try and expose the joint where the thigh attaches and we’ll cut right through it. Next, we’ll do the same on the other side.

For the breast meat, we’ll start by locating the bone in the middle and running our blade as close to it as possible. Take care to try to keep as much of the skin intact as possible. Feel free to go slow here, you definitely don’t what to rush it.

With some patience you should now have 4 gorgeous pieces of turkey. We’ll save the carcass, the wings and the giblets to make some amazing keto friendly, gluten-free turkey stock and gravy later on. 

Now, it’s time to get our turkey ready for its sous vide bath. We’ll start by filling our tub with some warm water, attaching our Anova Nano sous vide circulator and setting the temperature to 150 degrees fahrenheit or about 65 degrees celsius.

Next, let’s grab our trusty cast iron skillet. We’ll put it on the stove and set the burner to high to get it ripping hot. Now, if you don’t have a cast iron pan, honestly you should invest in one for just such occasions as this, but if that’s not an option, go ahead and use a non-stick pan so the skin doesn’t stick to the pan. Just be careful not to heat it up too high as most nonstick pans have a coating that’s only rated to a certain temperature without becoming toxic.

This feels like it’s ready to go, so I’m going to grab some high smoke point oil - in this case, I’m using avocado oil, and I’ll pour it in there to get an even coating.

Next, I’m going to pre-sear my turkey. It doesn’t need much, just about 2 minutes on each side, but this step will help to ensure that we seal in as much flavor and moisture as possible and it makes the final sear at the end so much easier.

After our turkey has got a nice initial sear, we’ll take a generous amount of kosher salt and make sure our turkey is seasoned on both sides. Next, we’ll insert our turkey into a vacuum sealer bag and give it some herbs to keep it company. I’ve got some thyme, rosemary and sage here that I’ve bunched into an herb bouquet of sorts and I’m throwing it in the bag on the meat side, taking care to make good contact with the meat. 

Now if you don’t have a vacuum sealer, you can go ahead and use gallon sized ziplock bags instead, those will work just fine.

We’ll be cooking this turkey for several hours, and in that time, the salt and herbs will form a brine that will baste the turkey in incredible flavor that will find its way into every bite. Ugh - I honestly can’t wait to eat this.

Allright, the next step is to seal up all of this goodness start the cooking process. We’re going to take these legs and and submerge them in the water bath. These babies are going to cook for 12 hours.

In the meantime, the white meat is going in the fridge until it’s time for it to join the party.

After 12 hours, it’s time to dial down the temperature to 130 degrees fahrenheit or about 55 degrees celsius. Even though we’re technically done cooking the dark meat, we’re going to leave it in the water bath with the white meat for another 12 hours. That way, we can serve the turkey together and everything will be piping hot for our guests.

About 30 minutes to an hour prior to serving, we’re going to set the oven to broil. Once the oven is preheated, we’ll take the turkey out of the water bath, remove the herbs and dab it dry. Now it’s time to throw it under the broiler until the skin is nice and crispy.

Then, it’s time to blow people’s minds with the best turkey they’ve ever tasted.