Roasted turkey or chicken can be one of the most satisfying dishes you’ll ever make. Crispy skin and juicy meat make for an unbeatable combination. But getting both results at the same time is surprisingly difficult.
If you don’t care as much about the crispy skin, skip cooking the bird whole and instead prepare the dark and light meat separately. For holidays, we like to create a confit of turkey legs, brine the breast meat, and cook both sous vide at their respective times and temperatures. Cooking sous vide provides a precision-based strategy for maximizing juiciness, and it has an additional bonus: It frees up precious oven space for other dishes on your menu. The only downside of this method is that you won’t get the crispy skin.
If you want to roast the bird whole and get both crispy skin and juicy meat, the challenge comes down to the fact that the skin needs high heat to crisp, but that same heat dries out the breast meat. This is a big issue with chicken, but even more so with turkey. If you manage to get a crispy exterior, chances are the breast meat will end up too dry. The usual solution is brining, which means soaking the bird in a salt-water solution to boost moisture, tenderness, and flavor. This helps the meat retain more juices during cooking, resulting in a juicier, more flavorful dish. The catch is that brining a whole bird makes it nearly impossible to crisp the skin.
Fortunately, there’s a way to get the best of both worlds: Inject the brine directly into the breast meat using a brine injector or syringe. You can learn more about this technique in our blog: Building a Better Turkey. This is very easy to do using a butcher’s syringe, also called a meat injector. Meat injectors usually include two large needles: one has a slanted tip for marinades with spices, and one is perforated for diffusing liquids. You can also see it used in our Slow-Baked Chicken with Onions.
In the recipe below, we use a mixture of milk and apple juice to create a unique brine that infuses the meat with phosphates, creating an unbeatable tenderness and flavor within the turkey.
