A Turkey Recipe That Solves All Your Turkey Problems | Home Movies with Alison Roman

This Thanksgiving, I’m doubling down on dark meat (the best part of the turkey) and less stress. We’re making turkey legs. What’s a turkey leg? Apparently it depends on who you ask (?), but I’m here to tell you it’s the thigh and the drumstick. These turkey legs are seasoned a day ahead in salt, pepper and sugar, and day of, they’re roasted in shallots, herbs, and (lots of) fat. That’s it. You’re done. Almost no work (you didn’t baste!) and the payoff is moist meat that comes right off the bone (carving be damned!) and hours back of your life.

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#thanksgiving #turkey #turkeylegs #roasting #alisonroman

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Recipe URL: anewsletter.alisoneroman.com/p/slow-roasted-turkey-video

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VIDEO CHAPTERS:
00:04 Slow Roasted Turkey | Home Movies with Alison Roman
00:12 Let’s talk turkey
01:39 Season your legs the day before in salt, paper, and sugar
02:32 Thank you, Fresh Direct
03:42 The Big Day
04:36 Roast turkey in shallots, herbs, and (lots of) fat
06:55 Only 3 hours later (take your foil off)
07:18 Only 1 more hour later (turkey’s done)
08:07 This turkey needs no carving

CREDITS:
Director: Daniel Hurwitz (@dannyhurwitz)
DP: Sean Ryan
B-Cam: Erron Francis (@viewsfromtheattic)
Audio: Yves Albaret (@yvesarmand)
Food Assist: Jane Morgan (@janecooksforyou)
Graphics: Natalie Bolton (@nattattie)
Editor: Ben Vigus (@123456789ben)
Typography Designer: Britt Cobb (@thebrittcobb)

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– So, it’s time for the turkey. It’s time to talk  turkey. We’re talking turkey, it’s turkey time.   – I don’t know anything about  like turkey culture I guess.   – A lot of turkey meat, dry. – Turkey is disgusting and  

Should be avoided at all costs. – Breast meat doesn’t need to be eaten at all.   – Basting is a lie. – If I have one singular complaint   about turkey, it is that it’s too big. – My solution this year is to just do the  

Dark meat. It’s like the leg, it’s the leg and the  thigh. Slow roasted over the course of like many   hours. You can use olive oil or chicken fat, but  something similar to a confit, and it is the most  

Delicious turkey you’ll ever have, period. But it  also solves a lot of your problems. Number one,   you can use chicken, you could use duck, you could  use goose. Same method, same ingredient, same   technique. So if you’re sick of turkey, go ahead  and use a different bird, see if I care. It can  

Serve fewer people than a whole bird. You can just  do two pounds of turkey legs. You could scale it   up to six pounds of turkey legs. And the leftovers  will keep for a very, very long time. It’s not  

Like sliced turkey meat that tends to dry out or  you need to feel like you need to eat immediately.   So solves the scalability problem. This turkey can  be made days in advance. This turkey can be made  

Five days in advance. This turkey can be made  hours in advance. This turkey can be made and   pulled outta the oven and then eaten immediately.  It won’t be stressing you out. It is not something   that you need to concern yourself with at all.  This turkey is vegan, no. Anytime you’re cooking  

A large piece of meat, be it a whole chicken, big  turkey legs or quarters, prime rib, pork shoulder,   leg of lamb, seasoning it at least 24 hours in  advance is going to give you the best possible   result. We have light brown sugar, kosher salt,  and a little more than a tablespoon of black  

Pepper. Okay, we have a lot of turkey legs. This  is a smallish one and that’s great by me. Yeah,   get in there, take a look. Take a long hard look  at that gorgeous leg. Basically just seasoning the  

Turkey on both sides with this salt, sugar, pepper  mixture. And we’re gonna let it sit overnight.   This is such a nice do ahead that to think of  doing this should give you like peace and solace,   not stress. So I’m not worried about this  like fitting nicely in here. I’m just gonna  

Cover this and put it in the fridge and we’ll  worry about what vessel I bake it in tomorrow.   We interrupt this episode of “Home Movies” to  bring you a special thank you from our sponsor,   Fresh Direct. Fresh Direct and I are in a deep,  passionate, long-term committed relationship, both  

Professionally and personally. I use Fresh Direct  for my dinner parties, for my photo shoots, for   every episode of “Home Movies,” for when I’m not  feeling well and just can’t leave the house. It is   a service that I am deeply, deeply dependent on. I  love Fresh Direct because I know what I’m getting  

When I shop there. They have the brands that I  already love and trust. They have like a really   awesome selection of like farm produce and things  that I would normally get to the farmer’s market   but that they deliver to me. And I just really  like the selection, I trust it. I’m very picky  

With my groceries and I don’t let just anyone pick  out my parsley, but Fresh Direct, I trust you.   And if you’re loving this video, you can get the  full menu, the full Thanksgiving experience over  

On my YouTube page. And in the description of that  episode, you’ll find a link. And if you click that   link, it will take you to a page where you can buy  all the groceries that you need to make this exact  

Menu. And new customers can enter the code roman50  at checkout to get $50 off their first order of   $99 or more, plus free delivery. And I can’t wait  for you to join me. Lemme know if anything I say  

Contradicts the recipe, Jane. I’m just going for  it. I have sort of dry brined these legs. Just   by sitting in this dish overnight, look how much  liquid has been given off. We don’t wanna include  

Any of that in our final sort of baking. So what  I am gonna do is I’m gonna transfer these to a   new baking dish. You basically wanna make sure  the thigh and the meatiest parts are submerged.  

The tip of the drumstick, if anything, should be  the thing that is sort of protruded. I also think   that two of these legs are actually on the smaller  side and people are gonna have legs closer to this  

And all four would not fit in this dish. So I’m  gonna make the call that you should do two legs   per baking dish, but you basically want them to be  flat like this. Would it be a holiday if I didn’t  

Root around in my fridge for an hour? Where are  the party herbs? To these baking dishes I’m gonna   add some shallots, some herbs, some garlic, and  I’m gonna keep the skin on ’cause I like the way   it looks when it roasts. And then the garlic,  I’m just having crosswise. I’m really feeling  

Thyme this year. And if I have a lot of something,  I’m gonna use it. If I have an herb that I’ve been   using for something else, I’m gonna use it again  and again and again, like rather than have like  

Random herbs. But I always, you know, I like  to mix them up. So I’m gonna use some oregano,   some marjoram, some thyme. I’ll save the sage  for the squash. But if you wanted to add sage,  

Now is the time. Again, not an herb I use often,  but when I do, it’s Thanksgiving. Basically I’m   using 50% chicken fat and 50% olive oil. You  could use duck fat if you had it. You could use  

100% percent duck fat or 100% chicken fat or 100%  olive oil. I really like cooking with chicken fat   when the occasion calls for it. And I feel like  a holiday, the occasion is really calling for it.  

You’ll need about two cups of each per baking  dish. You want the fat to come up mostly over   the turkey and you’re not really gonna touch this  beyond what you see now. So like kind of how you  

Arrange things in the baking dish is how they will  appear at the end. And this is very much like a,   excuse me for what I’m about to say, an oven to  table dish in that like you could easily bring  

This from the oven to the table. Okay, so these  go in, I’m gonna cover them with foil. They go   in at 275 for three hours and basically at that  point they will be completely cooked through,   they will be delicious, they’ll be tender, but  they’ll be a little not brown. They’ll be browning  

But not as brown. So what I’ll do is I’ll take  the foil off for the last hour of cooking. Also,   don’t panic, all of this fat we are gonna reuse.  It is gonna be more than what we put in because  

Some of that turkey fat is gonna render and it’s  gonna be flavored with like garlic and shallot and   thyme and oregano and it’s gonna be so delicious  and you can use it throughout the year. The   investment in that large amount of chicken fat,  duck fat, olive oil, whatever, which is expensive,  

It’s something that is an investment in the  future of your cooking. You don’t have to worry   about getting this too, too tight. I just kind of  do like a cover. And in they go, and that’s it,   that’s the hardest part. That’s like you’ve  made the turkey basically, and all you have  

To do is wait. The most important ingredient  is time. Ooh, it already looks so good.   – [Producer] Do you wanna show everyone else? – Yeah, doesn’t it look so nice already? I’m just   going to gently coat the top. But this turkey is  cooked through. It is tender, it is perfect, it is  

Delicious. It is the moment. It’s gonna go back  in the oven for another hour at least. Yum.   – [Producer] Wow, that’s crazy, whoa. – Bubble bubble, it’s giving witches’   brew. It’s giving spooky. – [Producer] Oh wow.   – [Alison] Could it be more gold brown? – [Producer] That’s crazy,  

– [Alison] Right? – [Producer] What a glow up.   – So beautiful, so gorgeous. So that’s  done, I mean, it’s like beautiful, shreddy,   delicious looking meat. For like the amount of  effort it takes, there’s no greater reward. I  

Will never do more than I have to when it comes  to a turkey because the best turkey is still like,   it’s great, it’s like, it’s great, it’s good,  I mean, this is fantastic. But like the amount  

Of effort I put into this is about as much  as I wanna put into a turkey, no offense.   – [Producer] And now the main event, – [Alison] The moment we’ve all   been waiting for. – [Producer] Truly.  

– So doing this is actually very easy. All we’re  doing is we are lifting the turkey from the baking   dish and putting it on here. It is so tender that  you don’t need to carve it. It will just kind of  

Fall apart on its own. So we’ll see you in a bit.  I’m gonna set the table, I’m gonna light some   candles. We’re gonna put some music on, I’m gonna  change. It’s gonna get less hot in here. It’s  

Gonna be great, I can’t wait. The other nice thing  about this turkey is that not only do you not have   to carve it in your kitchen, you also don’t have  to carve it when you’re at the table. You really  

Just pull the meat apart and you sort of shred it  like this and give yourself like a beautiful hunk   of gorgeous dark turkey meat. If you’re a good  friend, you might pull all the turkey off this  

One thigh and leave it for the next person in  case they’re feeling shy. But this to me like   illustrates the like gorgeous beauty of what this  turkey is supposed to be and how you’re supposed   to eat it. And because we’re all friends, nobody  minds that I use my hands the whole time. Mm,  

My God, it’s so good. I just did something with  my voice that was like giving Shoshanna.   – [Producer] Tell me more. – Well, I think ’cause I’m rewatching “Girls.”   – [Producer] Oh my God. – And she’s incepting. I was like,  

You know, I had like a tick. I’m like, we  gotta refresh, I can’t bring that with me.