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An Easier Roast Turkey (That Uses a Tool for Pizza) and The Best Way to Boil Corn (Don't Boil!)

Feb 27, 2020
Today in America's Test Kitchen, Dan shows Julia an innovative

roast

turkey

recipe. Lisa checks the oven thermometers. Bridget and Julia share clever Thanksgiving shortcuts and Becky discovers the secrets of foolproof

boil

ed

corn

. It all comes together right here in America's test kitchen. Here in the test kitchen. Every year we create a new complicated recipe, every dish we develop goes through our rigorous testing process and

turkey

s are no exception. Now, the average turkey recipe requires about 50 birds to perfect, so we did the math with 26 recipes under our belt. It means that more than 1,300 turkeys have passed through this kitchen and the big question we always get asked is what do you do with all those leftovers?
an easier roast turkey that uses a tool for pizza and the best way to boil corn don t boil
Well, we eat them, our friends eat them, our friends, the children, our friends, the teachers, eat them, and so on since We work approximately half a year in advance. Spring is turkey season here in the test kitchen, so without further ado we would like to introduce you to our newest turkey of the year. Hey, there are many ways to

roast

a turkey, but you often have to do it. Giving up convenience so we can have all that gorgeous Norman Rockwell looking turkey with perfectly cooked white and dark meat and amazing gravy, but could we have convenience and perfection?
an easier roast turkey that uses a tool for pizza and the best way to boil corn don t boil

More Interesting Facts About,

an easier roast turkey that uses a tool for pizza and the best way to boil corn don t boil...

I say yeah, okay, but we have to get there, so we start. with a 12 pound turkey and if you look at a turkey, it's a terrible shape to roast, yeah, it's very lumpy, right? It's lumpy, all the meat that dries out very quickly is on top, all the dark meat that can last more time is down so a lot of times we end up flipping going back and forth breaking it we didn't want to do any of that we want to keep this as simple as possible don't flip the bird I agree with not flipping the board as much as possible can especially on thanksgiving , so we'll start by first removing the giblets and the neck that are in here, so we'll save those and use them later in the sauce so we don't want to get rid of them.
an easier roast turkey that uses a tool for pizza and the best way to boil corn don t boil
I'm glad they're here, but we want them out of the turkey to roast. I have four tablespoons of kosher salt here and four teaspoons of sugar. In fact, let's salt this bird. Now salt does many things and seasons. It also moves into the muscle fibers and helps them retain moisture, makes them look more tender, sugar does a lot of those same things a little less effectively, but it also adds some sweetness that we like and we're going to give it to you. put the turkey but it has to go under the skin, which means I'm going to separate the skin from the meat with a little bit of turkey mitt, turkey mitt, yeah, we're going to remove that membrane, so I do this side with my right hand , but then when I want to do this leg, I go in with my left and that way I can move it back and forth so you like a turkey glove on both hands.
an easier roast turkey that uses a tool for pizza and the best way to boil corn don t boil
I do it, in addition to allowing us to place the salt and sugar. the meat, this also forms a little air pocket and that means we can drain more fat and we can also get this crisper drawer and I also like to go around this side here and separate a little bit on this side so it's a full body massage. of butters, okay, that's great and while I'm here I'll start here. We are looking to place approximately four teaspoons under each breast and two teaspoons on each leg, what we are looking for is an even distribution.
We developed this recipe using diamond crystal kosher salt which measures slightly different than other brands of kosher salt, so if you are using a different brand you can visit our website for more information, so for the rest of this, we'll go inside. the cavity we're going to have to put this in the refrigerator for 24 to 48 hours before doing it. I'm going to rely on the legs and I like to go under and under, there's probably some sailor's knot in here. I don't know, so the last thing I'm going to do is tuck these wings back, they're a little sturdier than a chicken's, so you have to use a little more muscle on them, beautiful, oh, that's taking shape. is taking shape so let's go over here and we're going to put this in the refrigerator uncovered so it has additional dehydration on the outside which leads to better browning so this turkey has been on vacation and it's been hanging on the refrigerator for about 48 hours the skin almost looks like leather it's so dry, very dry, that's good, that's good, I know it doesn't look very good right now, but I can see it in the future and I know this will be good, so What I'm going to do is just pat any remaining moisture in there and we should be pretty dry at this point, all right, so now we're going to make some paste that's going to be put on the outside of the bird to help to brown.
I have a teaspoon of baking powder here and a teaspoon and a half of oil. We're going to mix this well, it's a strange paste, it's a strange paste, so we really need a good browning because what we're really going to do. It is protecting the breast for part of the cooking time and it will not brown very well during that time. Okay, so I'm going to paint this and we'll go over it all over, but it's really important for the brisket, so I know we do this a lot. We use baking soda to help meat and poultry brown, but we've never used baking powder, so why the difference here?
We've actually used it in a very old recipe for a crispy roast chicken and what it does is it acts similar to soda. It's not as alkaline, but it still browns more because the pH is a little higher, it's also salt, so it will help draw out more moisture and that's always good in the oven, well that's good for the brisket. In fact, we're going to make our shield now, the shield is a little arts and crafts here, so we're just going to make an aluminum shield that's about the same shape as the crown here now, as I mentioned before, the turkeys are horrible way to cook well and all this meat really wants to dry quickly so what we're going to do is make this cute I thought you were going to make a paper airplane you thought I was going to put my head it does it's a little It looks a little like a paper airplane, so what we're going to do is make this nice little shield here, so it may look a little silly, but this saves us from having to flip the turkey halfway.
About 30 minutes ago I put a baking stone. in the oven we're not making

pizza

, that's actually the key to making this recipe work, what we're basically doing is creating this huge heat sink in the oven, so we've got the spout stone there, we've got a roasting pan on top of it. . and the entire setup has been preheated for 30 minutes at 500 degrees, so it's very, very hot. When we place the turkey directly in the roasting pan, the dark meat is low, so it will get much hotter. We've also protected this to be extremely protected, so in the end they come at the same time.
I get you, so a preheated baking sheet and a shield on the breast means you speed up the dark meat and slow down the white meat. Exactly, I'm with you, and I have two tablespoons. of oil, so let's put it on the bottom of the pan, oh, you can tell by how hot the pan is, by that oil, it immediately started to glow, oh yeah, it's almost smoking, very, very hot, so Now I'm just going to Move them so I don't touch them with the turkey. Pick up the bird directly. Can you hear it super loud?
So we'll go back to the oven. We'll turn it down to 425 degrees and leave it for 45 minutes. Now that we've given the dark meat a really good boost, we're going to lower the oven temperature to 325 degrees, remove that foil shield, and continue until the breast registers 165 degrees and the thighs and legs are at 175. We'll leave Set the record straight about which Thanksgiving shortcuts work and which don't, so you can get that great meal on the table without breaking gravy in a jar, aka the

best

way to ruin your turkey. We tried the options at the supermarket. and our advice is to stay away, we scoured the supermarket for great pre-made rolls and we found them, stone baked artisan french generals from pepperidge farms, they are completely factory cooked in a stone oven and have a nice crispy taste and crunchy. chewy flavor now one of these is a lifesaver and the other is going to sink the ship.
Frozen peas are more convenient and often taste better than fresh, but make the mistake of using frozen green beans in your casserole and you're done. Finding porridge, now canned pumpkin, was a revelation. In fact, we found two brands that we liked better than fresh pumpkin. Libby's canned pumpkin and a canned pumpkin pie. Both brands offer plain spiced and sweetened versions. Buy the pumpkin plain and season it yourself. We tested eight of the top brands of filler in a box and decided it's

best

to stay away from that kind of stuff. With just a little extra work, you can make a filling from scratch that will turn out much better.
Find our homemade stuffing recipe. along with more thanksgiving tips on our website americastestkitchen.com so it's been 90 minutes and it definitely looks good and smells good yes that bird is beautiful I know it looks good so let's get to the breasts that we're looking at 165 and we've got it right, that's good and we'll check out the dark meat. Great, we're ready, well done, excellent, perfectly done, not well done, so I'll grab it if you don't mind closing, you bet, oh, beautiful. Okay, so let's transfer this to our carving board. I love watching people do this, everyone has their own way and you have tongs and a wooden spoon.
Yes, I mainly lift with my grippers and I like it. just tip it over and let those juices run out because we can use them, okay, put it here, which is a Norman Rockwell bird, it looks good, yeah, it's very attractive, we didn't have to break it down or anything, so this is Sit and Resting for at least 45 minutes seems like a long time, but there's a lot of heat trapped here, so if we cut it too early, a lot of that juice will be gone, so at 45 minutes you can even go up to an hour to give you time to rest. do other things that we're going to do and I was worried that the fat would burn in that preheated pan on that hot stove, but they're beautiful, that's going to make some good sauce, yeah, so what we're going to do first is strain it through of this fine mesh strainer.
I'm going to use a spatula and just scrape it down to make sure everything loosens up, that tastes good, oh it smells good too. It smells like a vacation in here, okay, so first we're going to run it through this fine mesh strainer like this, if there are any bits of skin, we're going to get rid of that now to get lump-free sauce, lump-free sauce, yeah, in a lot of ways, it's good. So the next step is to put it in a fat separator. There's a lot of rendered fat here. We're going to want to use some, but not all of it well, so we'll let it sit.
About 10 minutes, make sure it really separates completely and then it's time to make the sauce sound nice so that our turkey still stays there and stays nice and hot, so we're going to focus on the sauce, which is almost as important like turkey. To do this right, we're going to start with the liquid that we took out of the pan and now it's separated into a nice liquid underneath, so that's what we want to capture. This is kind of cool and original fat separator, so just press this. little lever and you get what was at the bottom, so the juices that the differential added, the juices are at the bottom and the fat has risen to the top exactly, so you can go until you see it change.
Great, there we go well, so that's it. our juices and then I'm going to go right into this pan here, we're going to use three tablespoons of this fat for our sauce and those are some tasty fats that will result in a really delicious sauce. I'm going to put this aside. I'm going to heat this up over medium high heat and now we finally get back to our neck and our giblets, so I'm glad we saved those, they're going to provide a lot of flavor, okay, that's nice and hot, we'll get our giblets. they set well and brown well, these are nice and brown all over, they have a good love, these will go back in once we have all our liquid in there to let them infuse a little more, we'll take them out for now.
We're going to turn this down to medium now we're going to go in with our aromatics. I have a small onion that we chop here. A small carrot cut into thin slices to get a lot of flavor. Also five sprigs of parsley. and two bay leaves, okay, so we're going to cook this until everything is nice and soft in about five to seven minutes mmm, that's starting to smell like sauce, yeah, they're getting nice and melty, they'll blend right in. with the sauce, so next we're going to add our flour, we're going to make a traditional roux and we're going to stir this until all the flour is covered in fat, okay, that looks great, now we're going to add our fat, nice, dark tons of flavor, that It's liquid gold, right there, that's liquid gold, sothe trick to adding this we want to go very slowly, some very meaty drops never tell you the first time my daughter tried the sauce, not well, my daughter is quite young and that's how it was.
When she was little she didn't really like sauces, so we always put a small mold on the side and the sauce looked dark and scary, but she took a bite and her face lit up, she threw her hands in the air and said , winner. great, it's pretty well mixed in there, it's

easier

to make sure you get all the flour with less liquid if you fill it if you fill it completely, then you try to find all those little bits and clips, okay, so now I'm going to use three and a quarter cups of water and I'm going to dilute that very thick paste with this. and again, a little slow here, it really pays off, once it's smooth and going a little bit faster, put the rest in and finally we're going to use a quarter cup of white wine, okay, so our giblets will go back to get in. now we have our liquid in there and that's going to add a lot of flavor to the sauce, really, but it's going to be great, we're going to bring it to a simmer and leave it for about 10 minutes, we'll see. thicken a lot, it will also reduce a little during that time, so concentrate a little more also sounds good, what does winter smell like, winter?
Okay, so it's been 10 minutes. I'm going to turn off the heat and give it a quick taste. That fat was quite salty and that's why we used water instead of store-bought broth, so here you really want to taste before seasoning. Salt is good, give me some pepper, so now I'm going to remove the neck and then. Now we're going to put it through the strainer, this can be your serving bowl and it's going to go straight from here to the table and since there's a lot of good flavor and stuff, we're going to push it around a little bit with our spatula.
Make sure everything comes out without any lumps, yes, it looks very silky, very silky. Sorry, I'll take it for you. I'll have it, I've got it, I can't let that not be soup, Julia, okay, great, so now it's time to Cut the bird. I'm going to start with the dark meat here and I'm going to cut the skin down the side, it's pretty crispy, it's actually okay, so I'm going to go down here to the thigh and just make little cuts until I see. that bone comes out right there go in around that and it'll come out fine for you so transfer this here and I think it's

easier

to go in and exercise the meat a little bit outside of the wishbone first and then I start on the chest here use all that blade and be nice and close to this sternum, but you can start peeling it back, you can peel it back a little bit like this, it opens it up so you can see straight through, peel it back, right there, well done, I hate it. little slices of turkey that you don't get any skin from, oh yeah, so I like to leave them a little thicker like this, are you all white or dark or both?
Yes, yes, okay, very good answer, nice piece of breast, there are a couple of pieces of thigh, oh. That looks good, okay, some sauce for you, yes please, well, it's amazing, the meat is very well seasoned, it's juicy, it's not the old dry turkey that you sometimes get, its classic flavor classic, and this turkey is amazing and not the gravy winner too. Bad, right winner of the most foolproof Thanksgiving turkey recipe, rub sugar and salt under the skin and refrigerate the uncovered turkey for a day or two before roasting. Our secret to even cooking is to heat the

pizza

stone on the lowest rack of the oven and cover the top. turkey with foil, finally simmer all that tasty fat with the turkey neck, some giblets and a little wine to make an amazing gravy and there you have it, from the test kitchen to your kitchen, a recipe to bullet proof roast turkey for reliable results with the recipes you need.
We found that a good oven thermometer in home ovens can be inaccurate by up to 50 degrees. Your oven has an internal temperature gauge, but it only reads the area where it is installed, which is usually in a very out of the way location on the back or side. of the oven box does not necessarily measure the center of the oven where you are cooking, so we tested 10 thermometers below 20. Now, first we checked their accuracy, we put four of each model in the oven at 250, 350 and 450 degrees with a laboratory. degree thermocouple as a benchmark with three brands, some of the models actually failed and showed temperatures that were between 10 and 25 degrees below the actual oven temperature.
We opened them up and they all worked pretty much the same, so we really looked at how easy they were to use. or not, I mean, look at this every time you pick it up, others just couldn't latch onto the racks of five different brands of ovens we tested and then, most important of all, can we read them? We looked with the oven door open and closed and from different angles and some of them had a protrusion on their faces that totally blocked our view of important numbers or were so busy that it was impossible to read them.
Our winner passed all the tests. It is precise. He has great temperature marks. A simple and streamlined face. Nice wide base that sits securely on all types of oven racks without so much fiddling. It's called the cdn pro accurate thermometer and it costs just under nine dollars, but one last thing: you don't need to leave the oven thermometer in the oven. the time you can use it to calibrate your oven every few months just place it right in the center of the oven, turn on the oven and then check when it is fully preheated and then it matches the temperature that you set on the oven, you are going to learn If your oven is heats or cools and then you can adjust the dial accordingly, you will always get better cooking results when you know your oven, you might think why do I need a

boil

ed

corn

recipe, but I get calls and texts all summer long.
Friends who want to know what the correct boiling time is, it turns out that the answer to perfectly boiled corn is to not boil the corn at all and we also discovered an easy way to time it with the rest of your dinner, oh that's crucial because when You boil corn, timing is a little tough and you want to time it with the other things you're doing, you don't have to worry anymore, so I have to ask how many ears of corn it took us to figure out how to boil corn properly. Oh, hundreds and hundreds, I mean we had bushels of corn, show me how it's done, so we'll start, we'll shuck some corn, is there any special technique for shucking, because after bushels we must have figured something out. get in there and do it right, you know, be aggressive, so let's grab our six ears of corn and I've got four liters of water here that should be about to boil, let's take a look, okay, that's about to boil. .
Look how there are nice big bubbles, so I'm going to turn off the heat. You're turning off the, that's right, add the corn, okay and if you want to cover me, is there salt in the water? there's no salt in the water, we found that adding salt actually hardens the kernels a little bit, so let's add that at the table, okay, so the corn is in the hot water, the water is off the heat, we put the cover, that's right. I'll let it sit for 10 minutes and that's how hard it was, you barely know a recipe Becky, I know it's very simple, isn't that great?
Yeah, so you're pretty specific about the amount of water in the corn cobs, right? years of corn four quarts of water, what if you wanted to use eight years of corn or even make a dozen? If you want to use eight years, that's fine, just leave the corn in the water for 15 minutes if you want to make a dozen, you should make two pots of water, four liters of water in each pot, so six years of corn, 10 minutes, You got it, the key to perfectly cooked corn is not the thyme, it's the temperature in the raw corn, the starches within the kernels are raw and it has a chalky flavor, but as the corn reaches 150 degrees, those Starches begin to gelatinize and acquire a silkier texture when cooked above 170 degrees;
However, the pectin that gives the kernels structure begins to break down, making the corn taste mushy, so for perfectly cooked corn the sweet spot is 150 to 170 degrees, so while the corn finishes, I thought I'd make some fun flavored salt. I know something a little different, yeah, so I've got two tablespoons of kosher salt, four teaspoons of chili powder, oh, hello, and three. quarter teaspoon lime zest oh that's cool so it's chili salt lime chili salt and lime very simple something different let's do it right and mix it up so the corn has been soaking in hot water for 10 minutes, okay, but you know what's great.
The thing is, yeah, what's good? We could leave this in there for up to 30 minutes, really that long, yes, it will stay warm, it won't overcook and then if you're busy grilling your steak or working on the rest of your dinner. the tripe waiting for you, that's the real trick to perfectly boiled corn, do you do what I do?, you make the corn roll totally because you know what summer there's a dedicated stick of butter that's just for corn, that's it everything, oh, that butter mixed with the chili powder is forming a nice paste on the outside.
It's going to be good. You know, this isn't high quality farmers market corn, it's just supermarket corn and it tastes amazing. Yes, you can really taste the sweet taste. It has a silky texture, you still get that great crunch, so the last word on the best way to cook corn is not to boil it, but to let it sit in a pot of boiling water off the heat for 10 minutes, so from the test kitchen. to your kitchen the definitive recipe for infallible boiled corn. You can get this recipe, all of this season's recipes along with our tastings and tests and select episodes on our website americastestkitchen.com.
Thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen. How about leaving a comment and telling us what recipes you're excited to make or just say hello. You can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel. See you later. See you. later

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