Christmas Turkey: It's In the Bag!

(a.k.a. "Steve Cooks the Turkey," with apologies to the memory of Stuart McLean)

Given how much eating out we were compelled to do in the month of December, it felt good to prepare and cook a proper meal on Christmas Day. We kept things relatively simple: roast turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, slow cooker yams and roasted broccoli. It was difficult not having Mum around, but I thought of her often as I cooked the turkey the way she always did - in a Look bag.

There are certainly lots of different ways to cook a turkey - barbecue, deep-frying, etc. - but if you are doing yours in an oven and you aren't using one of these amazing bags to do it, I have to confess, I cannot fathom why. There is about 60 seconds worth of additional prep required, but you get a better turkey that cooks faster and is far easier to clean up.

You can find the bags in most supermarkets, typically in the Food Storage neighbourhood, alongside zip-lock bags, plastic wrap and the like. A package of two bags is less than $5.

One of the bags will comfortably fit a 20 lb. turkey (or even larger, but you will need to careful!) and comes with a plastic tie for sealing.

You will want to dust the inside of the bag with a small bit of flour, to prevent the bird from sticking to it, and place it in your roaster. Folding the edges down a few inches facilitates bagging the bird.

Season the turkey as you normally would. For us, that meant brining it the day before, then rubbing it down with olive oil and patting it down with the Kinder's Buttery Steakhouse Rub we came across at Costco recently (hella good, and not too salty).  A lack of planning on my part meant this turkey was going in unstuffed, a switch-up for us, but which would also result in a faster cooking time. Transferring the greased, spiced fowl to the bag is best done with two people, especially if it is a heavier bird.

Once sealed, you will want to cut a half-dozen or so 1 cm slits into the bag (a critical step to preventing a messy explosion in your oven). I did four of them and also snipped off the topmost corner of the bag.

Since temperature is the only true measure of a turkey's doneness, use of a thermometer is essential, as far as I'm concerned anyhow. A few years back, Island Mike got us a wireless thermometer which revolutionized roast cooking in our household. No more opening the door and losing previous heat (and even more precious time) while inserting a thermometer or squinting to read a stay-in model. We've worn out our first one but replaced it immediately. We set the new version for 155, inserting the probe into the breast of the turkey (anticipating a rise to 170 after taking it out of the oven).

With the turkey seasoned, bag sealed and vented, and thermometer in place, the bird is placed into the oven which has been preheated to 350 degrees. a 16 pound turkey will normally take somewhere in the vicinity of 4 hours to cook.

Ours was done in a little more than 2.

I know a lot of people are wary of cooking their turkey this way for fear of ending up with a bland, boiled bird with no crispiness to it. As you can see, there is still sufficient heat to make the skin a crisp, golden brown.

Placing a saucepan in the sink, tipping the roasting pan and cutting a slit into the bag makes collecting the juices for gravy extremely easy (and for the record, Audrey made her best gravy EVER this year - the Kinder's is likely to be our go-to seasoning for future turkeys). and instead of having to take the scouring pad or curly Kate to a pan full of baked-on detritus, there was a single errant spot that a simple soapy dishrag was able to resolve.

We let the turkey settle for 20-25 minutes while we roasted the broccoli and made gravy and stuffing. Carving can sometimes be a challenge since the turkey is often so moist that it wants to slough right off the bones, meaning you having to platter it with care. This time around it still had enough firmness to facilitate carving (more chunks than slices per se), and it was still nice and hot when we got it to the table.

The brining imparted a fantastic flavour to the turkey, while the bag meant that even the white meat was succulent. The whole process is so easy that I will usually buy a second smaller bird to cook on a random, non-holiday weekend.

And although I rarely prepare turkey any other way, did it feel good to cook this one up Mum-style while my sister and her husband were here to enjoy it? Yeah, it sure did.