Turkey Porchetta | Italian-Style Thanksgiving Turkey Breast | Food Wishes

The classic, Italian pork porchetta preparation, where the meat is butterflied, liberally seasoned, rolled, and tied, is a perfect way to approach a roasted, boneless turkey breast. Chef John’s recipe may not be the most traditional turkey breast you have ever made, but it is certain to be one of the most flavorful, moist, juicy bites of roast Thanksgiving turkey you have ever had. Enjoy!

For the fully formatted, printable, written recipe, follow this link: https://www.allrecipes.com/turkey-porchetta-recipe-11841232

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[Music] Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with turkey porquetta. That’s right. If it works well for pork, it almost always works well for turkey. And this garlicky herby porquetta approach was no different. And while this won’t be the most traditional turkey you’ve ever had, there’s a really good chance it will be the most flavorful. And to get started, we’re going to prep our breast, which is a boneless but skin-on turkey breast and technically half a breast since it’s just one side. And as you can see, this came with the tenderloin attached, which most do. And what we’ll do is kind of flip that over to the thinner side of the breast. And then we’ll take a nice sharp, thin knife, and we will make a slightly angled cut like this, right into the thickest part. And as we’re slicing, we’re kind of pulling and rolling the meat away from the cut. And once that first one’s been done, we can make some smaller cuts wherever we think the meat’s thick enough. And we can do that on both sides with the goal of creating as much surface area as possible for our seasoning. And do not worry about precision. Once this is tied and roasted, once sliced, I promise you it’s going to look amazing. And that’s it. Once our meat’s been spled out, we will begin our seasoning. and flavoring with a generous amount of kosher salt as well as some freshly and fairly coarsely ground black pepper. And while it’s never a bad idea to spread things evenly since this is going to be rolled up and tied, everything’s going to find its way. So again, do not obsess with perfection here or anywhere else for that matter. And then after the salt and pepper, I’m going to do some chili flakes, just for a little extra zing, which I’m going to follow with a ton of crushed garlic. And I’m going to go ahead and take my freakishly small wooden spoon and spread that out into a fairly even layer. And then once our fresh garlic’s been applied, I’m going to grate over the zest of an orange and lemon. And if you’ve ever wondered if a microplane gets dull, well, yes, apparently it does because I was grading fairly enthusiastically, but very little was happening. So, after struggling through the orange, I grabbed my other microplane zestester and use that for the lemon with much better results. And then besides the black pepper, citrus, and garlic, one of the other signature flavorings of porquetta would be some crushed fennel seeds. But pro tip, we’re definitely going to want to toast those a little bit first in a dry pan set over medium heat, just for a couple minutes until we can smell that beautiful fennel aroma. And once we can, we’ll transfer those into our mortar. And we will pestle them for a few seconds to crush them up a bit, at which point we’ll go ahead and sprinkle those over as well. And of course, we’ll want to do that ahead of time. And then the last mandatory ingredient will be some freshly chopped rosemary, which by the way, I didn’t quite mince fine enough. Okay, I was in a hurry as usual. And I should have spent a few more seconds chopping that a little smaller. And yes, I used a ridiculous amount of that in pretty much everything, which is usually my game plan with a pork porquetta. So feel free to dial those back if you don’t want something quite as intense. And that’s it. one season. We’ll gather that back together, sort of reassembling it or as close as we’re able. And it really does not matter as long as we end up with a seam at the bottom since, as I mentioned, we’re going to tie this all together nice and tightly, which is going to be our next step. And for that, we’ll take four lengths of kitchen twine, and we’ll slide that underneath about three inches from the end. And we will twist that string through about three or four times, which will allow us to cinch it up nice and tightly before we finish with a knot. And after trimming off the excess, we’ll do that three more times. Placing the next one in the center a couple inches away from the first tie. And once those two in the center have been completed, we will do two more on either end. And I know we’ve done this before and just started at one of the ends and worked our way back before this turkey breast. I think it’s easier if we get the two ties in the middle done first, which is where most of the meat is. And I feel like once that’s secured, the ties on the ends are a little easier. And once that’s been completed, we could do an optional step of sort of pulling down the skin wherever it’s cinched up. Okay, it’s not really a big deal, and you don’t have to. I mean, you are, after all, the Loretta Lin of your Porquetta skin, but I do think it looks a little nicer if that skin’s nice and tight. And that’s it. We’ll go ahead and grab that and bring it over to our roasting pan. But before we place it on the rack, I’m going to add some diced celery, carrots, and onions to the bottom of the pan just to get those beautiful aromatics as we roast. Plus, as you’ll see, it’s going to make our optional gravy much more delicious later. And once those are in and our rack is down, we’ll place our turkey on top. And then I like to take a paper towel and make sure the skin is dry, as well as maybe brush off a few pieces of rosemary. since I enjoy a fairly pristine golden brown skin. And then before this goes in the oven, we’ll go ahead and season the top with some more salt. At which point, this is ready to transfer into the upper center of a 475°ree oven for exactly 30 minutes. At which point, we’ll lower our heat to 300. And we’ll let that cook for another 45 minutes or so, or until we’ve hit our desired internal temp, which for me is between 145 and 150. And that’s it. Once done, we’ll go ahead and pull that out. And we will immediately transfer that onto a plate. And we will very loosely cover that with foil. At which point, we’re going to let that rest for a minimum of 15 to 20 minutes. And while our meat’s resting, if you want, and trust me, you really do, we will transfer our roasted vegetable bits into a saucepan with some melted butter set over medium heat. And what we’ll do is transfer in some flour. And we will cook that stirring for about 2 or 3 minutes. And no, those burned black bits are not going to be a problem. They’re actually going to give our gravy a beautiful deeper color. And any almost undetectable flavor they do add would be a very subtle bitter sweetness, which will actually help amplify all the other flavors. So, I know they look like a problem, but they are so not a problem. And once we have cooked our flour a little bit, we will transfer in some cold chicken or turkey broth. And yes, mine was homemade, which is why it looks gelatinous. And as you well know, if you stir cold liquid into a hot R, you will never under any circumstances have lumps. So, we’ll go ahead and whisk that in. And we’ll raise our heat to medium high. And we will cook this stirring occasionally until it starts to boil. And once it does, that’s as thick as your sauce is going to get. And if that’s too thick for you, just simply add some more broth. Or if it’s too thin, just simply reduce it a bit. But other than those adjustments and of course tasting for seasoning, our gravy is ready to use. And I am going to strain it before I do, but of course that’s up to you. And that’s it. Once our gravy is done and our turkey porquetta is rested, we’ll go ahead and slice in. And if everything’s gone according to plan, when you reveal the cross-section, it should look exactly like two turkey claws coming at you. Oh yeah, look at those talons. So, I was absolutely thrilled with how that looked, and I proceeded to slice up one half before transferring it into a platter for service on top of some mustard greens along with some simple but beautifully roasted potatoes. And then I finished up by ladling over a little bit of our gravy, plus one more nice big pinch of chili flakes. And by the way, in real life, just sauce the turkey once it’s on the plate. All right, I just did this because I have to take some contractually obligated pictures and I really wanted those to include some glistening gravy. And that’s it. Our turkey porquetta is ready to enjoy, which I’m going to do by eating one piece right out of the platter because I simply couldn’t wait. It was just looking and smelling so incredible. And that, my friends, really was a phenomenal bite of roast turkey. And after that little bit of a chef’s snack, I went ahead and plated up one properly. And after applying some of that gravy to my potatoes and meat, I tossed on a pinch of chili flakes and then grabbed a fork and knife to go in for the official taste. And as far as the texture goes, as long as you do pull this at 145 to 150 internal temp, you’re going to have absolutely beautiful, tender, juicy meat. And while the times and temps in your grandma’s cookbook might disagree with me, it is perfectly safe and far superior to that dry meat you would have gotten. And as far as the taste goes, I know garlic is not classically paired with holiday turkey, but pretty much every other ingredient we used is. And because garlic does work so well with all those things, I think you’ll agree with me that it works really, really well here. And as I said earlier, I was very aggressive with the amount of seasoning, as I usually am. But other than the salt, if you wanted to cut down on some of the ingredient amounts for something slightly more subtle, that is totally up to you. But no matter what you do, I think this pork cutter preparation is perfect for a boneless turkey breast. And I really do hope you give it a try soon. So, please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts, a printable written recipe, and much more info as usual. And as always, enjoy. [Music]