Ask people which part of Christmas causes them the most stress and many will answer “the turkey”. Despite cooking for a living, I’ve always counted myself among this group in the past. Until this week, that is, when I cooked 11 birds on your behalf.
My mission was: (a) to find out if you can tell the difference between a £70 hand-reared turkey and its mass-produced cousins; and (b) to identify the supermarket bird that will result in the happiest Christmas dinner.
This was an interesting experiment for me because I have always assumed that you get what you pay for. We buy meat only from small producers at Great Queen Street. I won’t put battery-farmed poultry or its eggs anywhere near the menu. I believe that meat tastes better when it has enjoyed a good life, as close to its natural one as possible.
To put prejudice aside and conduct the taste test fairly, I assembled a panel of chefs and waiters at the restaurant and made sure that only I knew which bird was which. I also cooked all the turkeys the same way, and served them unadorned save for their roasting juices and some steamed greens. No hiding behind a mouthful of bread sauce, stuffing or cranberry jelly for these turkeys. No marinades either, and no bacon. Just a quick rub with salt and pepper, which I measured carefully for consistency.
First off, the bad news: anyone hoping to pass off a mass-produced bird as a superior hand-reared one will be disappointed. We tasted the supermarket turkeys against a benchmark of three birds from specialist producers and price would always out. Laverstoke Park’s biodynamically reared, but eye-wateringly expensive Organic Norfolk Black (laverstokepark.co.uk; £13.95/kg) was a comfortable winner. The skin crisped up beautifully, the breast meat had great depth of flavour, and the leg meat was dark and sweet, almost like duck.
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Next came the KellyBronze (kelly-turkeys.com; from £8.96/kg), which cooked like a dream and was tasty and tender, and Peele’s Norfolk Black (peelesblackturkeys.co.uk; from £7.72/kg), which had the best skin across the board. That’s not to say some of the eight supermarket turkeys didn’t come through as well (see box far right). Who’d have thought Asda’s monster British White Turkey would share the honours with Waitrose? But I’d rather not look Bernard Matthews in the eye again.
The biggest surprise wasn’t the taste of individual birds, but how much I enjoyed cooking them without embellishment. Turkey can be delicious, but I think I can now say that to get the best from whatever bird you buy, you must cook it simply.
When turkey gets a bad rap it is usually because of the dryness of the meat. This stems from a misunderstanding about the type of bird it is. It looks a lot like chicken and can taste a lot like chicken. But turkey will never behave like chicken in the oven. It doesn’t have the requisite fat content in its skin or its meat. In many ways, it is more akin to pheasant than any other meat.
When we cooked the birds we decided to treat them like big pheasants. You will notice from our recipe that there is no larding (bacon strips), no tin foil, and no starting or finishing the roast on a high heat to brown it. This roasting method is hard and fast from start to finish, as it should be with all lean meat. The resting, after the bird has roasted is crucial. Juices percolate throughout the carcass and the meat relaxes. The longer it rests in a warmish (not hot) place, the more tender and juicy the meat. Up to an hour’s rest before carving is ideal.
Tom Norrington-Davies is head chef of Great Queen Street, 32 Great Queen Street, London WC2 (020 -7242 0622)