Turkey: 5 ways to cook the bird

So Christmas is fast approaching (3 weeks to go) and I'm sure many of you will be working on how to go about sorting the dinner. Turkey is the traditional meat of the season here in the UK (along with goose and sometimes beef) but it does have a tendency to dry out in the oven if you're not careful. There are several ways to try to get around this including roasting the bird breast-down to enable the juices to drain toward the breast meat and to roast the breast and the legs separately (but where's the fun of carving in that?).

How much thought have you put in to cooking your turkey in a totally different way? Life Hackery's article about 5 alternative ways of cooking turkey may well be just what you're looking for.

This year, we're spending christmas in the company of my brother and his girlfriend so we've decided on a Turducken (labelled 3 bird roast - Turducken isn't a pretty name is it?) for three of us with a vegetarian option for my brother's girlfriend. I know we're excited as Al's been going on about turducken for a good few years now and is happy we've finally got one. I am however being a bad foodie and have opted to get ours (well our guests have picked it up and stashed it in their freezer) from Aldi. It's a bit cheaty but I'm not sure I mind having someone else do all the work.

I'm also quite interested in the peking turkey idea. Sounds delicious! I'm not convinced that Tofurky really counts as an alternative way to cook turkey though!

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The Slow Cooker: Turkey Thigh Joint

We bought a slow cooker a few months ago now. It was going cheap at £12 and it's a good size to feed the two of us (and have leftovers) so we decided to go for it. Al's mum has one and we convinced ourselves it'd be a good idea. So far, we've been right. It's very economical and very easy to just prepare the food, switch it on and walk away.

We've made a few different things so far including chilli, stews and casseroles but I've been looking for something a bit different, a bit more interesting. Having scoured the internet and various forums for recipes I decided that it'd be a good idea to cook a joint of meat in the slow cooker. I read lots of advice from slow cooking experts and decided to give it a go.

We bought a boneless turkey thigh joint of about 900g. I seared it in a pan this morning with some dried herbs, cumin and paprika until all sides had a nice golden colour.
I roughly chopped up a couple of small onions and chucked them into the bottom of the pot, I added a crushed up stock cube, the meat, a clove of crushed garlic and about 1/2 cm of water in the bottom and switched the cooker on high.
I turned it down to low after about 3 hours and left it that way until we were ready to eat.

The meat was so tender it just fell apart as we carved it (as you can see in the picture). A few gravy granules were added to the juice to thinken it up a little and served it with the meat and some roast potatoes. It was good. We're using the leftover meat with some fresh pasta tomorrow.

The only problem I had is that turkey and chicken seem to go a little stringy in the cooker. It wasn't so bad with a large joint (smaller chicken pieces in a casserole just aren't good). We've got a lamb shoulder joint to try next and I'm expecting it to be delicious.

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