Note to self: Next year, get a butcher
Butchers. I don’t know what they get paid, but it’s not enough.
For two days I had been considering the problem of how I was going to fit two ten-pound turkeys into the oven. Then this morning it hit me: I’d cut the second one up. It was simple, efficient, and it would cook quickly.
So after I had stuffed, trussed, buttered and seasoned the first bird, I got to work on the second with a couple of knives.
I’ve done this with chickens before. This has to be the same thing, just on a slightly larger scale, that’s all.
I started by hacking away at a wing with my chef’s knife. Hack, hack.Hack.
I switched to the large serrated bread knife. Saw, saw.
Saw.
Then I grabbed fistfulls of raw flesh and start to twist. A sick crack.
I gagged. Repeatedly. Flecks of raw turkey flesh were flying. At last, a drumstick.
With some kind of bloody, hacked-off bone hanging cockeyed off the side of it.
Really. It was a drumstick only instead of the nicely-wrapped ones I find at the market, this one looked like a leg ripped off a bloody corpse.
I tucked it nicely in the pan. Tried to get the stray bone at a little less of an angle. Tucked the shreds of flesh in around it.
Went to work on the next one.
Hack, hack. Saw, saw. Gag, gag.
Flecks of flesh, cracked bone, and — good GOD turkey blood – everywhere.
The bread knife proved most effective. The shredding motion — while it produced a cloud of raw pink turkey particles — was pretty successful at separating bones.
(If you should happen to come to my house, and I slice some lovely baguette for you, please do not mention this whole episode. It is unseemly.)
Finally, all the legs were separated and tucked into the pan, with the skin stretched and patched to make it all look a little less like the poor thing had wandered into a wood chipper before coming here.
All that remained was the breast.
Split-breast. You’ve heard this term, right? So that’s the goal. Split. The breast.
Back to the trusty chef’s knife. Hack, hack. I am constantly thinking about cost-effectiveness, so as I went through this process, I considered what it would have cost me to get this brilliant idea back in the grocery store. A pack of drumsticks, wings, thighs … split breast. I think it was a buck a pound more. –So you figure, what? Ten bucks I saved?
Hack, hack. Of course, the chef’s knife is precious. A rare gift certificate sent us to the store where we tested knives for 45 minutes before settling on this one. I sharpen it every day and sing it little songs so it won’t leave me.
This hacking shit can’t be good for it.
If I damaged the knife, the total savings in this process would be negative $150.
I gave up, crammed the remainder of the carcass in the pan and shoved it in the oven.
Yeah, here’s the thing: The bulk of this thing is in the breast. So all that work hadn’t condensed it much. Just created a turkey of the exact same height that looked like the victim of a limb-shattering grenade.
Back to the cutting board. Hack, hack. Saw, saw. Pukey, pukey.
Finally, with a great Earth-shattering shudder, the hulk of bird split open. Salt, pepper, olive oil, dash of lemon — oven.
Littered across my cutting board: scraps of flesh. Puddles of skin. An entire chunk of spine.
At the end of the day, the turkey came out of the oven golden and juicy. Seriously, I think I may never roast a whole bird again.
Of course, if I do go the route of roasting in pieces, I will get someone to hack it for me. Because I will never get over the sight of my Thanksgiving guest chomping on the drumstick, taking great care to avoid getting that cockeyed spare bone rammed up his nose.
Toujours un délice...
Source: Motherhood in not for wimps
CHeers!
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