Cooking Turkey with the Sous Vide Part 1

I am not a fan of turkey but when I’m gone, I don’t want Chad, Nicole and Addie to remember that I would not cook a turkey on Thanksgiving so . . I cook a turkey on Thanksgiving.

I’ve seen a couple of recipes using the sous vide that I think could make me like turkey. Maybe not like it, but not dread eating it.

But before I do something new and different with a turkey, I want to try it on just Vince and me first.

Recipe #1:

Cut the turkey up like a chicken, season it, add rosemary and thyme sprigs to the bags, along with what seemed like a ton of butter so I didn’t put nearly so much. Place the dark meat in a bag and seal it; place the white meat in a separate bag and seal it. Place the white meat in the fridge. Place the dark meat in the sous vide at 145 degrees for a few hours, then turn the heat down and add the white meat and cook it for a few more hours. Once that’s all done, remove the meat, drain it, dry it, rub it with oil and more herbs and roast it in the oven briefly – til it looks like it’s been roasted.

This recipe seemed like a good one to try for just the two of us because it will be easy to put away leftovers and not have a bone to deal with.

Recipe #2:

Here’s the recipe I’m going to try next. I think we will like this one better because it will look more like a real roasted turkey.

Gross picture . . I know, but that was my first time to cut up a whole turkey!

This morning I cut up the turkey, seasoned it and got it into bags and got the dark meat into the sous vide. Then the white meat was added. It’s almost time to remove both of them and once it cools down a bit, I’ll put it in the fridge and cook it on Friday.

Tomorrow is trash pickup so I wanted to get all the throw away parts in the trash and out of here but there was actually nothing to throw away except the bag the turkey came in.

I boiled the bones with celery, onions and bay leaves to make the broth for turkey bone soup, which is probably what we’ll have tomorrow. There wasn’t much fat since it was all still attached to the turkey pieces I was cooking in the sous vide.

I picked off all the meat that was left in the bones. That will go into the soup. I boiled the liver and gizzard, cut that up and it will go into a pot of rice dressing. The boiled bones will be left out in the sun during the day for several days, brought into the garage at night to keep animals out of them, and then crushed to go into the garden.

I think that turkey was about $16 and we’re going to get quite a few meals out of it. Hopefully I’ll like it cooked this way and if so, I may buy an extra turkey or two for the freezer.