Recipe: Roast turkey - brined and sous vide

We cooked a turkey the other day and turned it into a little experiment.  I was really busy and since I am never comfortable leaving the house with something in the oven, needed a different approach to avoid eating at midnight.  Why not sous vide?  I have no problem being somewhere else if dinner is just hanging out in the hot tub.  The only issue is that any time I've sous vide turkey before has been at work where the birds are taken apart and the white and dark meat are prepared and sous vide separately - I still wanted a good old fashioned bird to carve.

So, to proceed, it seemed logical to follow and merge the same principles it takes to both roast a whole turkey and to sous vide as I have done before, albeit in smaller pieces.  The first step was to brine it, and. I followed the same procedure as in my brined turkey breast recipe.  After brining, I rinsed the bird, patted it dry, and gave it a little coat of olive oil, followed by a seasoning mix (in the cavity too) of  smoked paprika, black pepper and powdered garlic - no salt of course since the brine gives enough.  You can season it your way, that's just what I was feeling at the time.

The next challenge was the "vacuum seal".  If you have bags big enough for your turkey, great, but I didn't, so I would have to improvise.  With the cavity, air tight wasn't going to happen anyway, so I focused on ensuring my package was watertight and as air minimal as possible.  I did happen to have a bunch of large ziplock bags that would just fit the turkey inside with a little sticking out the end, so I alternated "head" and "tail" bagging the bird until I was confident no water was getting in.

To really cowboy the operation up, the only vessel appropriate to sous vide the turkey was a large stockpot.  I used my probe thermometer to monitor the temperature - easy - but very important to note that I also put a rack in the pot to both let the water circulate all around and keep the turkey off the bottom.  Remember that even with a pot of water, the very bottom of the pot is in contact with the stove and if the product touches it, you will lose the even temperature of the sous vide and possibly melt through the bag, losing your seal and botching the whole operation - so make sure you get a rack under the bird.

the turkey is the one on the right

Confident that the mechanics were going to work, I just needed to figure out the execution.  I wasn't even sure of the weight of our turkey - it tilted my kitchen scale, so it was over 5 lbs, but by how much?  Well Isabella is almost 10 lbs, so with baby in one arm and turkey in the other, I guesstimated the turkey at about 8 lbs.  This was mostly for future reference, because the nice thing with sous vide is that you have a wide window of time to work with.  As well, since I intended to finish the bird in the oven, it was ok if  it was cooked a bit under and the oven could just finish the job.  Generally speaking, 165F is the recommended cooked temperature for poultry.  The food safe "danger zone" is cleared at 160F, so I went with 163F to make sure I was cooking the turkey, yet leaving some room for the final roast.  I figured that 3 hours should be enough to cook it, so into the hot tub it went and out I went to run errands  (remember this was all about actually freeing up my time while still producing a turkey dinner).

3 hours later, beer in hand, I turned the oven on to 450F.  I pulled the turkey out of the water - the seal worked great, no water invaded the product.  The last ziplock bag did have a nice amount of turkey stock which immediately went on the stove to reduce to a jus.  I patted the bird dry to ensure a good roast and noticed something - since the sous vide package was so tight and the turkey was essentially cooked, there was no need for trussing for the roasting stage - sweet.  Just remember that this emphasizes the importance that the bird gets sealed up "pretty" because the sous vide process will set it up the way you left it.  From here, I just put some bacon strips over the top for tradition and fired it in the oven.  I was simply cooking for skin colour now, and just watched it and rotated it now and then.  After a little over 45 minutes, she looked great.  I let it rest, then checked the temperature next to the bone on the leg and it was bang on 165F.

If you were to compare this turkey with another brined and roasted one, it would be hard to tell the difference - it was golden brown, juicy, and full of flavour.  To compare the effort, even considering the fact that this was a first off experiment, no contest - this is an absolute cinch to pull off.  Of course, in the future, I can plan a bit better and get a proper sized vacuum bag and a vessel big enough for both a turkey and a circulator, but if this crazy cowboy effort can work this way, I know I will always be able to make it happen.  Circulators aren't always around, but you can always find a thermometer and create a watertight package - just remember your food safe and make sure your turkey is sous vide above 160F and the final roast adds a few degrees on top of that.

Happy cooking!