I hope your garage is as cold as a fridge.

~Ann

Air drying ducks overnight has been done for hundreds years and enjoyed by billions of Chinese people.

Roasted ducks are still being sold un-refrigerated all day today in many countries.

dcarch

For beijing duck I usually inflate the duck with a bicycle pump and a needle. I will try that with the turkey tonight, but I'm not sure it is very airtight. The inflation is simply to separate the skin from the flesh, helping the skin dry out more. I might have to do that manually instead.

I brined the half frozen turkey in a thermoelectric cooler so that it was still very cold when I removed it from the brine. I'm not sure it brined very well. Oh well.

I know it's already dead, but ouch!

I know nothing of drying skin and painting it and all, but I'll tell you an alternative way to get beautiful brown skin. On a rack, in a roaster, white wine under the rack, heavy duty foil in a loose pup tent over the top. Not crispy. Very moist, in fact. But pretty. :)

Question: Doesn't the fat get in the way of the drying?

I thank you for the picture. Most amusing. :)

Good luck with the project!

John - that's just wrong!!! LOL Worse than Mr Bean!

"Good Lord, what IS that?!"

My 7 y.o. daughter's reaction, as she saw that over my shoulder.

I'm thinking for further effect it should be hung up with something like these. Happy Thanksgiving - good luck and be sure to post after pictures!

Goodness, turkeys look a lot bigger when they are strung up like that, don't they? But, I've seen one strutting around the chicken yard (prior to freezing) and he was a magestic sight. I can now understand why Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be our national bird instead of the eagle. Or was that Thomas Jeffereson? But --- if the turkey was the national bird, could we really eat him on our feast days? Oh dear.......

Teresa

Well, the turkey inflated fine and the skin is starting to dry out nicely. No rodent tracks around the sweet drips on the floor so I think installing a cat door in the garage side door worked after all.

What do you think about stuffing with oranges and ginger? Do you think stuffing imparts flavor to a roasted bird? Will the drippings and hence gravy taste weird?

Oh, the fat doesn't seem to prevent the drying of the skin. Ducks are much fattier than turkeys and they dry fine when hung. I deplore modern lean birds and pigs.

I wish I could roast the bird standing up but my oven is not large enough. I wonder if I can suspend the bird with wire from the upper rack, with a roasting pan on the lower rack. Idea is to allow airflow all around the bird and avoid flabby wet skin on the lower half.

John - Depending on your oven you might be able to gain a couple inches by hanging it from an angle iron (or similar) mounted above the top track of the oven. I did that once with chicken. But now that I think about it, I still needed to put the drip pan directly on the oven floor and which damaged the oven a bit. And that was just a chicken.

Arrgh, measured oven and bird and it won't work. Okay, I'll just use the standard roasting pan and rack. :-(

Pork belly slow-roasting now, I'll get that mostly done so I can make the sauce from the drippings and then just need a final blast at higher temp before service.

SWMBO has me doing prep work since I'm the only one up. Peeled the purple potatoes and pureed the skins, which will be cooked and added to the mashed potatoes for extra deep purple color and, I guess, some vitamins. Also sauteeing some slivered almonds, garlic, shallots, and rosemary, which will be mixed in with the potatoes. Boiling the peeled potatoes now. Idea is all will be ready for SWMBO to mash and finish closer to dinnertime. After serving too many allegedly dry mashed potatoes, I have been relieved of the privilege of making this dish, and downgraded to prep monkey.

This post was edited by johnliu on Thu, Nov 27, 14 at 12:17

John,

You have a nice shop. Make something to stand the turkey up like a beer can chicken.

dcarch

Aw, but I bet you're a durned good prep monkey!

Glad the inflation worked. :) That's a trick I hadn't heard of. I understand about the duck fat, and figured your inflation was separating it from the skin. My crisp skin experience is from vertical chickens, and there the bits of skin which have the fat attached don't crisp. It seems to me that the fat could as easily cling to the skin as the meat during inflation, but I'm sure you have your tricks. :) We're not big on eating skins so just want them to look appetizing, so this is all a very informative thread for me. :)

Good luck with the air circulation...and have a happy holiday!

"----Glad the inflation worked. :) That's a trick I hadn't heard of. ---"

Here is how I did it. In less than two seconds.

dcarch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeD4O7EDGFk

Here is a link that might be useful: skinning a duck

Great video! I wish I'd seen that before pumping and pumping.

Change of plans. I lost the competition for the oven to Daughter-San's cornbread and then various pies, so the turkey is shoehorned into a Rival countertop roaster sitting on my table saw.

Really not ideal, but what the hey, we'll manage.

The close quarters may not allow enough air circulation for crispy skin. I could prop the lid open just 1/4 inch. Or I could use a torch or a heat gun to help the skin crisp right at the end of cooking. Or I could dust the skin with corn starch. Any thoughts?

I should add that I have literally never roasted Thanksgiving turkey as far as I can remember, going back at least a decade. Usually my sister does the bird and I do the meat. When we've been on our own for the holiday, I've made a prime rib or duck or goose, instead of a turkey. So this whole thing is an experiment.

I love it!! Especially the hemostat. :) I take it the tail end was sewn closed? I've used my father's industrial compressor for airbrush painting (he made me a step down valve), and used the bandsaw for making patchwork quilt templates, but I can just imagine what he'd say if I told him I wanted to inflate a duck. :) Sounds a lot easier than John's bicycle pump, but maybe it needs the step down too? How many psi can a duck take before it goes kablooey?

Oh my John - that's fowl!

/tricia

LOL, John, I had to grin at your picture of that hanging turkey. It just looks like some evil torture device. "Gobble now, or it'll get worse". (teehee)

I also used an electric roaster, but not because of oven room, because I left the only roaster I have that's big enough for an 18 pound turkey out at the farm in the "other" house. Ah well. I left the purple potatoes there too, so they'll be used for another meal and we had boring white mashed potatoes instead.

Happy Thanksgiving, I'm betting the turkey is delicious, and so is everything else.

So daughter is making cornbread for stuffing, or cornbread as a side dish? Or both, double duty?

Happy Thanksgiving.

Annie

May first thought about the poor bird was...

Ve haf vays of making you talk.

This post was edited by johnc777 on Thu, Nov 27, 14 at 22:48

That's a little crucifixionesque.

Well, here is a mixed report. The hanging and painting worked, as the skin was crisp. But it didn't have the flavor of duck skin, which may reflect the difference between the birds or maybe I didn't use enough salt - my paint was more sweet than savory. The bigger issue was that the countertop roaster didn't brown the breast at all. Temp was perfect and the flesh was tender and not dry at all. I ended up taking the bird back to the garage, after it had rested, and using a heat gun to brown and crisp the breast.

Here is my turkey halfway through the heat gun browning

And when finished

And my friend carving it up

He also made the gravy, expertly - he was head cook at camp for years and has been a line cook at a really good Asian restaurant, and loves to pitch in.

His lovely wife brought a salad

Which was finished with a balsamic reduction

And here is the table that SWMBO set

We had the turkey, a honey marinated pork belly with cranberry sauce, purple mashed potatoes with rosemary garlic almonds, a traditional white mashed potato, creamed spinach with shallots garlic almonds sherry, creamed corn, a salad of roasted broccoli and purple and orange cauliflower, Daughter's cornbread and apple stuffing, three pies, a pumpkin ginger soup, and something else that I forget.

It has been awhile since we had a big dinner party and our timing was not great. Everything was ready too early and there was a lot of reheating which isn't ideal. Cleanup took hours. With ten people, I think I washed a hundred pieces of flatware and sixty pieces of dishware, with forty glasses left to do this morning. It is all antique stuff and none of it can go in the dishwasher so it was a real chore. I don't think we're doing another formal dinner party for a while - it is so much work!

The turkey carcass is in my biggest stock pot and this weekend I'll make stock and reduce it down to a few ice cube trays, and give a couple trays to my friend.

Lessons learned: the countertop roaster shouldn't be used for things that barely fit inside; we need to use heated serving dishes and find some way to insulate them, or break out the chafing dishes; each person doesn't really need two knives, three forks, and two spoons; it is time to eat ramen noodles for...

haha...what an event. Looks delicious. We had some change of plans and had...duck...

John, thank you for sharing your meal and the beautiful table! That poor turkey looked amazing and kinky-- "50 shades of brown?" came to mind --LOL
The work involved with that much cooking, washing, cleaning and prep put us off hosting in a home. For the first time ever our whole group had dinner out at a local country club where one family belongs. You see I have a broken toe and limited time on my feet, one gal had spinal injections on Monday and the other gal is having hand surgery in two weeks. That left the 30 somethings and no one there seemed to be up to hosting either. And that's how we ended up at the Club. But the food was good an plentiful and we were all together which is what mattered.
Thank you for sharing your day. It all looked beautiful and sounds delicious, so I'm sure that everyone appreciated your enormous efforts. I wish my DH took an interest in cooking rather than in just the final results! :-D

Hi, John. It all looks fun and delicious. And a table full of vintage-y goodness!

So, in no order:

Yeah, you really need airflow to brown that thing. I found your thread too late to suggest it, but if you do turkey in the oven again, it's better to leave the roasting pan in the cupboard. Use a shallower pan instead, plus a rack, so the bird is raised up out of pan instead of being sheltered by the sides. You could also try the CI recommendation to rub your drying bird with a bit of baking powder (not soda) mixed with kosher salt. It does blah blah blah to the protein blah blah blah or some such gibberish.

Personally, I'm getting over CI-style tricks. I say, roast the bird upside down until the last hour. Then flip. You can heat blast a bit at the end. Or, turn the oven up to furnace and heat blast it the entire time. I did this once and the turkey was crispy, yet moist inside and delicious. You can't stuff it, though, and the turkey has to fly solo in the oven.

And please, do not make people use their dinner forks to eat their salads! It's what separates us from the animals! I have to go faint now.

You did an amazing job on the turkey! Gotta love a garage bird.

The table looks beautiful! I know it's a lot of dishwashing, but I think it's worth it sometimes, and one develops strategies. A couple of big dishpans help! I also do things like just rinse the stemware (so no rings) and put it out of the way to be washed when one feels energetic enough not to break any. :)

You can heat your serving dishes by pouring hot water in/on them, then drying them quickly with a tea towel (though if you have a low setting on your heat gun you could do that. If you keep your house chilly, you can warm the table dishes in an electric blanket, then put them on the table just before company arrives.

For timing, and more plate warming, there are electric hot trays and portable warming drawers (you could probably even use your roaster for keep warm if there's no bird in it and if it goes down to 140ð). Good garage sale finds.

Like everything, formal dinners are just a matter of practice.

Hey Marcolo!. I miss you. A lot. I haven't been to Boston much but next time I'll look you up, if you're willing!

Nothing at all to report on my kitchen, and there won't be, until my kids finish college, by which time I will be a drooling idiot in a sanitarium. Or perhaps a homeless guy and I'll be asking KF where should the Sterno can go and do you like white or brown cardboard for counters?

I've pulled back from the fancy food. Once a year for holidays, and whenever Daughter-san comes home from college. The rest of the time my cooking has become quite simple.

Impressive TG dinner party.

"----But it didn't have the flavor of duck skin, which may reflect the difference between the birds or maybe I didn't use enough salt - my paint was more sweet than savory.--"

Chinese use soy sauce, five-spice seasoning to braised the skin for roasted duck .

For crispying the skin, you may want to look into a gadget called "Searall"

dcarch

I'm pulling back from foodie-ism. ( I was never a foodie personally, but now I really hate it.) Also from science-driven cooking. It really hit me when I was looking for the latest theories on turkey roasting. All the pontification made me so ill that I decided not to cook at all this year.

It looked beautiful. I'm glad you had a good, if tiring time!

I don't do much cooking, so I don't contribute anything here, but I do read what the rest of you are doing. I saw that first picture and thought Game of Thrones, poultry style. Jeez.

I read up on roasting a turkey in an electric roaster. The article said that unless the bird is very small, it will steam rather than roast. It suggested putting the bird in the oven at the end to brown the skin, but I see you came up with an alternate solution. Ahem.

The woman with the salad has great arms. She must be hoisting lots of turkeys. Salad looks good too.

The table is absolutely gorgeous. Props to SWMBO. Do you remove the centerpiece to make way for the food? It really is a talent to get everything done at the same time to be hot and on the table.

I definitely found out about the steaming issue.

I'm not sure what she does with her arms, but she is young and active so has naturally good muscle tone.

The food was on the sideboard, so the table centerpiece was not in the way.

Yeah, the table really is gorgeous. My eye was especially drawn to the correct number of forks. Ahem.

Philosophical question: How important is crispy turkey skin anyway? When I go to other people's houses, they don't slice the breast like your friend did, a sliver of skin on each slice. They just serve the flesh. Crispy skin is important for the leg, but usually only one guest is up for playing Henry VIII.

I mean, you don't want to see aggressively flabby skin. You don't want to look at a pale bird that seems to need a chemical peel, Botox and a tuck. You don't want your guests wondering if your turkey died while on Social Security. But shattering crisp skin? Is it really that important?

A turkey is not a duck. It's not.

I have concluded from this experiment that crisp turkey skin at Thanksgiving is not that important, because no one eats turkey skin in a way that lets them appreciate crispness. It isn't eaten as just skin in little pancakes, it is eaten dripping with gravy on a plate heaped with other stuff.

But the experience was still interesting and informative. And now I have another use for my heat gun.

As for the table setting - the next several dinner parties I give will see each person get one plate and one fork, and better yet one plate and strictly finger food. I'm tired of doing dishes.

I'm also tired of the odor of turkey. I put the carcass, trimmings, wings, etc in my biggest stock pot and simmered until the liquid was reduced by 3/4. I'm going to make soup, and then not have turkey again for quite a while.

Yup, I'm moving on to cute fluffy bunnies.

Just say you're having a French evening. Unless something is particularly messy, we keep the same plate and the same knife and fork until the dessert ( fo casual meals)!Makes for a lot less washing up!

Y'know how The Stomping of the Divots (Polo interlude) gets la-di-dah people dressed in their best out onto mucky turf purposefully getting their oh, so lovely shoes dirty?

Maybe you should start a new family tradition for clearing courses at formal dinner parties--the Licking of the Forks. As the designated clearer is whisking away the plates, have everyone hold up their knives and forks and when all the plates are gone, call 1-2-3 lick! to prepare for the next course. :)

Or just have a wienie roast, for heaven's sake and let them lick their fingers. :)

Thanks for the report back. Since you started this thread, I've been wondering if I was missing something important. I'm sorry your troubles didn't yield something more worth the effort, but it sure made a delightful thread!

Vorwärts to the Hasenpfeffer!!!