Kenji’s wine braised turkey legs and sous vide breast

First time doing anything other than a straight forward roasted turkey and will never go back. I preferred the falling off the bone dark meat but friends were most impressed by the moist breast meat which bucks the typical experience of bone dry sawdust. The legs took a little over 2 hours at 275F. Even though it was only 3lbs of breast meat vs 5lbs in the sous vide recipe it took the full 2.5hrs at 145F to hit 143F. It took a bit of time to butcher the bird the night before but totally worth it, and will do it again in January (I always buy multiple birds as I love turkey and take the opportunity to get a few smaller 10-14lb birds available before thanksgiving to stock the freezer).

I often roast chicken skin and the stacked sheet pan method described in the sous vide recipe is superior to what I’ve been doing with wire racks so that was also a great pro tip. Maybe next year I’ll try the turchetta if I’m up for making my cooktop even more of a fat-splattered disaster (searing the legs was a mess even after dry brining).

Enjoy your birds everyone!