Sous Vide: your new holiday tradition. To enjoy a truly delicious, evenly cooked, moist holiday turkey, don’t shove it in the oven for hours. This year prepare the holiday turkey using  Sous Vide.

Why Sous Vide?

1.  Turkey is moist and perfectly cooked.

2.   If you will not be eating all the turkey, you can freeze it immediately and store it for up to six months.

3.  Once you put the turkey into the water-oven you don’t have to baste it, you don’t have to check it, you can forget about it.  It will be done in two hours.

4.  If you don’t get the turkey out right away (the game goes into overtime, or the conversation is just too good to move to the kitchen) it’s ok. The turkey won’t overcook if you leave it in longer.  You can enjoy your turkey any time you like.

5.  A month later, if you want to enjoy perfect turkey sandwiches – take the breast out of the freezer and place it back in the water bath.  A half hour later, pull it out and slice it. The turkey will be moist and ready to enjoy.

Start with a fresh turkey, not frozen. Upscale supermarkets and grocers offer fresh turkeys.  You may even have a local butcher shop, you can
purchase your bird from, and then be sure to have them prepare the bird for you.

Tell them you want the turkey cut into
a. Thighs
b. Breasts – cut it into two parts
c. Drumsticks
You don’t need the ribs, or the wings, or the other stuff.

Note: While turkeys have less Salmonella than chickens, they can
still be a source of food poisoning – a bug called Campylobacter.  After you butcher the turkey, be certain to clean all surfaces carefully and wash your hands.  I wash down the surfaces of the cutting board with Clorox – and after washing my hands I use Purell on them.

The Truth about Turkey

Have you ever found yourself tired after eating turkey? It used to be blamed on tryptophan – turkey has a higher concentration of tryptophan than most other foods. But tryptophan isn’t to blame for your sluggishness. Being tired after eating is common, and it usually means you ate too much food, or you ate too much food that was highly processed (the rolls, the potatoes, the breaded stuffing).

Turkey is a great white meat – meaning it is lean and has very little fat.  As such, it is a pretty healthy food. Putting a bit of butter on it, the equivalent of one pad per thigh, is fairly minimal, so you don’t need to feel guilty about it. Turkey is a healthy type of meat. It becomes unhealthy when you lather it with gravy, which has a high fat content. By cooking sous vide, you will find you have very little interest in gravy.

When turkeys were checked for salmonella the incidence was much smaller than found among chickens. Turkeys are raised a bit better, and wild turkeys taste better than raised ones.  Fresh and wild is better. The bacteria infecting turkeys can cause diarrhea—but simple precautions will help you avoid the problems.