Extra Bites: Talking Turkey

Ever wondered how to deep fry your turkey without the fiery drama? Janet Loughran of Chef Life Hacks shares her essential advice on mastering oil displacement, ensuring that your turkey gets the crispy finish you crave without an overflowing disaster. 

We also explore a novel approach to Thanksgiving turkey with Steven Bright. His fascinating technique of preparing a boneless turkey reveals how deboning simplifies brining and allows for more of his mother’s cornbread stuffing to get inside of the bird. Plus a quick lesson on salt. 

Get ready to be inspired by these expert insights that aim to elevate your holiday.

Transcript

Doug: 0:01

Hey everybody, it's Doug. It's the week of Thanksgiving and I didn't think we'd have an episode this week, but we do have a couple of extra bites to serve up to you both around turkey. First up, a tip from Janet Loughran of Chef Life Hacks. If you're going the route of deep frying your turkey, Janet, I know you and I had a conversation once about deep frying turkey and you were like whoa, there are a lot of problems that can happen. What's the deal with the overflowing of the oil and what to stay away from?

Janet: 0:30

Okay, so it's called displacement and it works with water as well. So if you were to fill the receptacle that you're going to use the turkey fryer there you go the big pot with water and dip the actual turkey in all the way. Okay. You don't have it heated. Nothing, it's just water in the pot, then you can see where that water line is going to hit once that turkey is in there. And you've noticed in the past, if you've worked with deep frying anything, even on your stove, it's going to bubble up.

Janet: 0:57

So, you need quite a bit of room of space to make sure that it's not going to overflow, cause as soon as it does, you're likely going to have a grease fire with that. You know flame underneath it immediately, and then you know you've got a story for the next day.

Doug: 1:10

but no turkey. So if you're doing if you're doing turkey frying measure ahead for displacement, you need some space for the bubbling up of the oil. You're never going to fill that fryer vessel the whole way full with oil. Heck, no.

Janet: 1:24

And I think at this point they've had so many instances of that. They actually have lines on there, but just don't trust it, because what if you're using a five-pound turkey as opposed to a 12-pound?

Doug: 1:34

turkey 22-pound turkey yeah, so the larger the more displacement Super important. Thank you, you're welcome Up. Next, another approach to doing turkey from our friend Stephen Bright. So everybody, we're back with my friend Chef Steven Bright, and we talked a few weeks ago with you just about your overarching culinary career. So interesting. We're coming up on the Thanksgiving and holiday season and, Steven, I was wondering if you have a method for doing the turkey that you could share with us.

Steven: 2:06

Yes, I'm from the school of, of course, Bob Sendall and All in Good Taste Famous catering in Pittsburgh. Yes, he does, a boneless turkey.

Doug: 2:18

Boneless turkey, like just the turkey breast or the whole thing. The whole thing is boneless.

Steven: 2:24

With the exception of the leg bone. Okay, so the thigh bones are removed, the breast bones are removed. All that whole, the whole cavity is removed. Interesting and then re stuffed to back to its original shape so you would never know that it didn't have bones in it. It's just. It looks just like that. It's filled with stuffing with the dressing yes.

Steven: 2:48

It's filled with with Bob's cornbread stuffing and I use my mom's cornbread recipe, my mom, my grandmother's recipe, but I do I still bone my, my turkey. It actually makes it easier to brine overnight because once you take the bones out it's just a, it's compactable. You can put it into a larger container and with enough water and salt in there to sort of brine it overnight.

Doug: 3:17

You mean for the lay person here. We might be able to get it in our fridge, yeah, where some of those big turkeys, you cannot.

Steven: 3:23

Yeah, there were years when you would check the weather to see if you could leave it in the garage overnight. That's right. Some years it's cold enough to do that. But yeah, you do. You make room in a refrigerator and you sort of just commit to putting that brine turkey in overnight so that it can retain all the moisture that it can.

Doug: 3:43

All right, so let's break that down a little bit. So you like to brine for 24 hours?

Steven: 3:48

Yeah, just because it's just a step that you can put in the refrigerator and forget about it and then work on other stuff.

Doug: 3:57

And what is your typical brine?

Steven: 3:59

Brine is for me especially going that long you don't want it to be too rich, too salty. I would say for every gallon of water you're going to want to use maybe a quarter cup of salt and then maybe half of that sugar, and then other components can go into brine. But I don't really feel like they make a big difference. Yeah With the turkey, you could put bay leaves and peppercorns and things in.

Doug: 4:30

Sometimes people do citrus slices or something.

Steven: 4:34

But that's all specific to what you like. I just like it really simple Little sugar, little salt and and water overnight, not too much I do have a little chef question what kind of salt do you use?

Doug: 4:47

kosher salt? What brand of kosher salt do you tend to buy?

Steven: 4:51

used the diamond, uh, one, but I, but I, at the store, if I see, uh, what's the blue box, it's morton, morton's. Yeah, I'll just go that, but do you know?

Doug: 5:01

there's a difference. No, I can't believe I'm telling you this. Yeah, but this is good. If you look at those two boxes, morton and Diamond Crystal, the Diamond Crystal box is double the size.

Steven: 5:13

Yes, I've noticed that, and it's because of the crystals and how they compact.

Doug: 5:16

So if you are using a quarter cup of diamond crystal salt, like you said, you should only use half of the amount of Morton's because it's more compact and I found this out the hard way on some dishes because. I've changed brands and now I've read about it Samin Nosrat and America's Test Kitchen have done some articles.

Steven: 5:36

Oh, that's good to know.

Doug: 5:36

Yeah. So to recap, you would use a quarter cup of probably diamond crystal salt yes, and then the sugar and water yes, and if you're going with Morton's, use half the amount of salt. Thank you.

Steven: 5:50

Yeah, because you don't want to over salt. I mean, that's something you can't reverse Right and you don't want to ruin your Thanksgiving. That would be disastrous.

Doug: 5:59

I can't believe I'm telling you something that you didn't know. I love it.

Steven: 6:03

No, yeah, you should be able to believe it. I don't know. You know I've had a wild career, but I don't know everything. Well, that's all right. You're still learning, that's right, and I never want to stop. That's wonderful.

Doug: 6:16

It's the best thing about food.

Steven: 6:17

Yeah, I think I'm just going to start buying diamond crystal salt.

Doug: 6:20

There you go, Chef Steven Bright. Thank you so much for being on The Pittsburgh Dish and happy holidays, Thank you. Finally, I just want to say I'm thankful for all of you out there who are listening to our show and extremely grateful for everyone that's come on to the show to share their stories, their recommendations, their ideas. I am truly thankful for all of you. Happy Thanksgiving.