Jamie Oliver's tips and tricks will 'guarantee' your Christmas turkey is the tastiest you've ever had.
Christmas dinner can be a daunting affair but celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has shared his method for cooking the most delicious turkey ever using his tried and tested tips and shortcuts so you can enjoy more time with your family.
In his new Channel 4 show Jamie's Christmas Shortcuts, he promises his "amazing cheats" will supercharge your Christmas showstopper and are the easiest way to maximise flavour. The TV chef takes the classic Christmas turkey up a notch with his simple stuffing that goes two ways and some "glorious" mulled wine gravy.
The turkey has been stuffed and allowed to rest for an hour and a half (Jamie Oliver/YouTube)"Once a year you come together with this mighty bird," Jamie says. "My job is to give you the basics, to hand-hold you through how to cook the best turkey. There's loads of little things that really make a difference. So let's get those hacks, shortcuts, those little guarantees of maximum flavour, so you can just carve it and enjoy it and be really proud of yourself."
First up, it's all about the prep. You need to let your turkey (Jamie uses a 5.5kg one) come to room temperature for about an hour and a half so that the meat doesn't tighten up in the oven after coming straight from the fridge.
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Jamie advises making the stuffing the day before so it takes the stress out of the big day and so everything falls into place easier. His recipe is for a meat and vegetarian option and uses classic Christmas ingredients such as cranberries, nutmeg and chestnuts - but you can swap out different herbs or fruits. You can also swap the cider for wine, whisky or port.
He says everyone likes things slightly differently and you have choices over whether to stuff the bird, the cavity, make a meatloaf with the stuffing or do all three using his recipe.
Ingredients you will need for the stuffing:
- Six regular onions, peeled and quartered
- Olive oil
- Two tablespoons of butter
- 100g dried cranberries
- Pot of dried apple slices
- Half a grated nutmeg
- Zest of one clementine
- 300ml cider
- 1kg good quality minced sausage meat
- 800g breadcrumbs from any bread you like, mixed in a processor
- Salt and pepper
Here's how to make Jamie's stuffing, two ways:
Place the onions along with a little salt and pepper into a food processor and whizz it up. Put a swig of olive oil into a frying pan along with two generous tablespoons of butter - it may seem like a lot but it's going to make a lot of stuffing. Let it bubble away.
Next up you need to add some herbs. Jamie uses sage because it's "the herb of Christmas", and adds a big handful ripped up. Grate in half a nutmeg and add the onions. Cook for around 15-20 minutes while mixing it around. Once the onion is light brown, add in the cranberries, and a good handful of chestnuts that have been broken up and the dried apple. Add a generous sprinkling of black pepper and sea salt and the clementine zest along with the cider and mix together while it continues cooking. Allow it to cool.
Once the mixture is cooled, mix in the breadcrumbs using your hands. Divide the mixture in half for the veggie option and place it into an oiled bun tin or roll into balls.
With the remaining mixture, add in the minced sausage meat. Split into two thirds and place the largest portion into an ovenproof bowl. Slice a clementine in half and with the flat edge up, press down into the top of the stuffing for decoration.
Take half of the remaining stuffing and push it into the neck end of the turkey, folding the skin over to contain it. Using the rest of the stuffing, press and pat it down into the carcass at the other end where the large cavity of the turkey is, being careful not to block the area because air needs to flow so the turkey cooks properly and is perfectly juicy.
Next is the trivet, which sits under the rack and holds the turkey off the roasting tray. This will be the basis of your gravy.
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Ingredients:
- Two sticks of celery chopped into large chunks
- Two carrots skin on roughly chopped into large chunks
- Clementine halved
- One onion quartered
- Turkey giblets
- One star anise
- Inch portion of a cinnamon stick
- Couple of sprigs of rosemary
- One bay leaf
- Two tablespoons of plain flour
- Generous cup of red wine
- 1 ½ pints of stock (either homemade or bought)
Add the carrots, celery, onion and clementine to a roasting tray that you can fit a rack on. With the heel of a sharp knife, crack the giblet bones several times to release the flavour and chop up any soft flesh from the kidney or heart - add to the roasting tray along with the star anise, rosemary stripped from the stalk and bay leaf.
Place the rack on top of the tray and put your turkey on it. Drizzle over some olive oil, season with salt and black pepper and massage into the skin and nooks and crannies.
Another one of Jamie's tried and tested tips for flavour is to take a clementine and secure a bay leaf to it with a clove. Put in the microwave for a minute and a half until it's boiling hot and then pop it in the turkey cavity. Cover the bird with foil, pressing down across the legs and into the contours of its shape but leaving the cavity exposed.
Put the turkey into a preheated oven at 180C / 350F for an hour and a half with the foil on and another hour with the foil off. To check if the turkey is cooked, you can use a meat thermometer in the thickest part of the meat and leave it for a bit - a good internal temperature is 70 degrees.
If you feel like you could rip the meat off the leg - that's another good sign. Another way to check is by holding the bird up with a fork in the cavity and allowing the juices to run out - they will be clear if the bird is cooked enough. Move the turkey to a platter and allow to rest for an hour and a half because the heat of the oven has pushed all the moisture into the middle so when it rests it spreads out again and carries on cooking. You can then cook both portions of the stuffing in the oven for 45 minutes.
Jamie Christmas shortcuts is available to watch on Channel 4 now.
Will you try Jamie's method for cooking turkey? Let us know in the comments below.
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