To be honest I'm with her on the turkey front ; it has a slight bitter twang that's similar to pork, but we've had great success with that since we started brining it because it takes away that farmyard aftertaste that reminds you where it came from. It was a risky strategy but something suggested it might do the same for turkey. So with very little to gain and an atmosphere to lose, I made like an iron and pressed on.
Timings are for a breast from a 6-8 person bird. You'll need to make adjustments if your breasts are bigger. No sniggering at the back.
Vital statistics - 62 degrees for 2 hours 45
Let's get the brining out the way as it's a bit outside the range of this blog but it is an important stage. Into a salad drawer went a 6% brine mix - 60g of salt per litre of water, plus a teaspoon of sugar at the end. This was mixed to dissolve it and placed in the fridge to cool down for a few hours, then the turkey went in weighed down with a plate. 12 hours or so later, I rinsed and patted it dry and removed the skin to cook it separately. More on that later.
As ever, I've made a bag an arms length too long. To be fair, a turkey breast's a fair chunk bigger than a chicken's, hence the bigger bag, all of which is an attempt to cloud the fact that the bag's just too darned big again.
See what I mean about the bag?? I'm not sure why I always do it. We even bought a ruler so I could measure out bags to fit the food but that would've meant a 'measuring breasts' paragraph and I'm not sure anyone's Thursday night needs that.
And off we go at 62 degrees. I normally do chicken at 60 and that's perfect but after giving Google a good seeing to, I settled on 62 for this as a good starting point.
Almost 3 hours later and this is what you get.
As usual for water bathed food, it's a bit anaemic at this point so taking my own advice from the searing food post, I figured turkey would benefit from a bit of fat to colour it. I normally use oil but this time I went with a mixture of oil and butter because the Double Sausage and Egg McMuffins we had for breakfast didn't have quite enough animal fat for one day.
The skin was simply done on a baking tray with a little oil and salt ; be easy on the salt if you've brined it obviously.
What you can see from the pictures is just how juicy it is. Cooking turkey in the heat of a conventional oven gives it a crumbly, almost chalky texture as the juices get wrung out when the meat contracts. Cooking at 62 degrees means much less moisture loss giving juicier meat. Brining helps too.
The sauce is a reduction of the turkey stock made from the bones. It's a base stock I make all my sauces from and I might well post the recipe onto the blog soon as it really is a good one, despite not being a sous vide thing.
And that's that. Here's a few thoughts though.
The only vegetables we've eaten today are potatoes. That's not going to help you too much.
Secondly, the water bath didn't help with flavour. Personally we don't like that aftertaste you get with turkey and brining sorted that out. If you do like that characteristic twang, you could leave that step out but it does season the meat which is something you may like. What the water bath did do is make it beautifully moist which is difficult to do in a conventional oven. For us, it was a two-pronged attack with the sous vide method providing one of those prongs.
What I would say is that my girlfriend's not backwards about going forwards when it comes to food. If she doesn't like something she'll say so she doesn't have to eat it again and she was adamant she really didn't like turkey. I've just asked her how she'd rate it now and she said 'delectable'. I didn't see that word coming, and neither's anyone else since about 1982. Bless her. All I'd say is it must've been good for her to make that kind of turnaround.
Lastly, I don't think I'd adjust the temperature. You could cook it a little longer a degree lower but it was so good as it was I'm not sure I would.
Definitely one to do again.
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