Thanksgiving Turkey Testing with The Food Lab

I remember the first time I tried to cook a turkey sous vide for thanksgiving way back in 2007. I bagged my bone-in, skin-on breast separately from a couple of turkey legs, threw some big hunks of pork fat in for good measure, then cooked the legs and the breast—at 165°F and 145°F, respectively—all day and all night before removing them from the bags, searing it all off, and serving it the next day. It was an unqualified failure. Not only was the breast meat dry and the leg meat tough, but getting the skin to crisp properly involved creating a greasy, smoky haze in the kitchen, all while trying to chat with family members and drink my bourbon and beer. On top of that, the thing ended up tasting like, well, like pan-seared sous vide turkey, with none of the deep, roasty aromas you get from a typical holiday bird. I've learned a lot since then, and I've been steadily tweaking my methods to produce better and better sous-vide-style roast turkey. I think I've finally nailed it, and the timing couldn't be better. With the Anova Precision Cooker, it's easier than ever for home cooks to take a stab at what was once relegated to the realm of restaurant kitchens.

Temperature, Timing, and Safety

It's easy to remember the "165°F = safe" and the "40°F to 140°F = the danger zone" rules. So much so that it's tempting to think of pasteurization as something akin to dropping a bomb into a fortress full of bacteria, instantly killing them all. But if you take a look at the USDA's charts, the reality is actually quite a bit more complex. Pasteurizing a piece of meat to destroy harmful bacteria is really much more similar to a slow siege, letting the bacteria die off at a steady rate. That rate is affected by the temperature of the meat. So while at 165°F you reach a 7-log10 reduction in bacteria count (that is, for every 10 million bacteria you started with, only one will remain) in under 10 seconds, at 140°F, this process can take almost ten minutes. That said, turkey cooked and held at 140°F for 30 minutes is just as safe as turkey cooked and held at 165°F for 10 seconds. Knowing the safety guidelines for this kind of pasteurization is the key to making sure that your sous-vide turkey is safe. You can find more details on turkey pasteurization along with time and temp in the Anova App's The Food Lab Turkey Guide.

So What Time and Temp?

Skin and Bones

Shaping Up

What About That Skin?

You might've noticed a couple of glaring omissions here thus far. Namely, what about that extra-crisp skin I promised, along with the roasted flavor? When you're roasting a turkey conventionally, that roasted flavor really mostly comes from the skin, as it's the only part of the turkey that's actually getting exposed to the high heat of the oven. For the meat underneath, it couldn't really care less whether it was in an oven or in a water bath—the final temperature is the only thing that matters. Now, with my Turkey Porchetta, I wrap the rolled breast in its own skin before cooking sous-vide then finishing in a deep fryer. This gives it crispness alright, but deep-fried skin doesn't taste anything like roasted skin.
For the full, step-by-step process, download the Anova Culinary App for iOS and Android.