Everyone loves Thanksgiving – friends and family gathered around a table sharing a delicious meal – but not everyone loves the hours of preparations involved with it. This year, keep Thanksgiving cooking under control by cooking smarter, not harder.
The turkey is by far the most important part of the Thanksgiving meal, and the one chefs suffer over the most. The inherent problem is that the large bird contains different types of meat, which are difficult to all cook well.
Grant Achatz of Alinea fame has a solution: stop glamorizing the turkey-carving process and focus on taste instead. Grant’s method involves cooking the different parts of the turkey separately, making it easier to get the best flavor our of each type of meat.
The recipe is a little crazy, but don’t let that discourage you. There is video proof to attest to its deliciousness. Here are the basics: you let a turkey defrost and carve it into several large pieces, by meat type. You throw these pieces into Ziplock bags with some spices and butter, and you boil the bags for two and half hours. Then you take the turkey out of the bags, and brown the pieces in a hot pan for ~2 minutes each. That’s it, you’re done.
You can watch the two videos of Grant putting this recipe, and ones for unique Thanksgiving sides and desert, into action here and here. If you’re strapped for time, this blogger distilled a text version of the recipe.
