No dialysis today, we microwaved our turkey early. 30 minutes on HIGH: Aluminum foil added to avoid overcooking tips: Done! Total cook time 140 minutes. My Mother used to start at 6AM to eat at 1 or 2:00PM! The spread: Czech dumblings, fresh cranberries, gravy, turkey, stuffing, fresh red cabbage made up sweet-sour. The happy camper! The white meat is tender and juicy, can be cut with your fork! Literature states temperature pop-ups are inaccurate, ours failed to work. My meat thermometer showed 180`F, 175 minimum is recommended. My wife used only a bit of poultry seasoning on the bird; the browning is natural, not added color. Until tasting microwaved turkey, one cannot imagine it's superiority. Oven-baked is often dry and stringy (at least ours was when I was a kid! Frank
Everything looks yummy. @Frank Sanoica . @Beth Gallagher , I think I'll put a piece of aluminum foil in mine tomorrow and see what happens.
I've done it. It was a tip for making a roast in the manual from my very first microwave oven. As Frank said, you use it to shield the ends of a large hunk of meat so that they do not dry out. The mass of the meat abosrbs enough of the microwaves so that there is not enough energy left to cause the foil to arc to the sides. I've never seen anyone microwave a turkey before. I was not impressed with that microwave roast I made. Just like sous vide cooking, you need to brown the meat one way or another (sear in a pan/use a torch/toss on a hot grill) in order to impart flavor (Maillard reaction.) I wonder if Frank rubbed that thing with oil so it would cook the outside.
@Frank Sanoica Man, that spread looks so good. I commented to Beth that I've done a roast in a microwave (shielding the ends with foil), but never have done any poultry. I'm surprised there's any brown on it. You must have rubbed it with oil or something. I've been doing bits & pieces of my Thanksgiving meal to get ahead of the game. I made cranberry sauce yesterday so it could sit for the flavors to meld. Today I made this: I've cubed and dried half of it to make dressing. The rest is destined to be thick-cut for open faced sandwiches w/gravy. I just finished making these: Gonna roast the turkey tomorrow and make the gravy so I don't get all jammed up on Thursday...it's been in the fridge brining for a couple of days. So Thursday I'll make mashed potatoes, dressing, and green bean casserole. Then I'll just heat up the turkey and gravy, reheat some rolls, and dish out the cranberry sauce.
@Beth Gallagher Everyone always is. General rule is: NO METAL! However, fact dilutes the problem based on the "loading" being imposed on the microwave circuitry. A big mass in the oven, like a turkey, reduces the effect of microwaves bouncing all over inside, allowing use of shielding such as shown. It takes experience, which I don't have, but my wife does. She taught microwave cooking classes when selling microwave ovens exclusively for Friedman's Microwave Ovens in Phoenix, which specialized in microwaves only. Starting on the job, she only knew about as much as anyone else: very little. The classes were offered free to any purchaser of an oven. Soon, she was baking cakes, meats, cooking entire meals by microwave only. There are many advantages. Little heat-up of premises in summer, unlike kitchen oven. Faster, shorter cooktime. Less energy consumption. Limitations exist of course. Whole eggs explode in microwaves, but wonderful-tasting eggs can easily be prepared as scrambled, omelets, "over", etc. Baked potatoes take only several minutes to reach perfection, as do apples. I remember my Mother baking potatoes in her oven for what seemed an awful long time...... Arguments against microwave cooking were quite common (still are). "They don't brown anything". "Easy because you know how". "It won't work for me". All stated with a nasally whine. My wife became adept at fielding them all! Heat anything enough and it will turn brown. Instruction book was her only teacher starting out; read it. It will work for anyone. Frank
@Shirley Martin @Beth Gallagher If you do that, it will spark like hell, scare the wits out of you! I once threw several Arby's beef sandwiches, still in their wrappers, in our microwave, started it up, smelled smoke, looked, and the damn wrappers were on FIRE! Seems Arby's wrappers had fine metal foil in them! Frank
Did my turkey today. Carved it and make the gravy. It looks dark, but the whole thing is moist. Must be the effect of the dry brine I did. I'm darned glad I did it a day ahead of time. Prep Time+Roasting Time+Resting Time+Carving Time+Gravy Time = The better part of a day. And that's just the turkey!!! I "dry brined" it in the fridge for a couple of days with a salt rub. The instructions said to not rinse it off, but I wish I had. It's a little salty, and so is the gravy I made with the carcass and the scraps. I didn't add any seasonings to either. Tomorrow I'll put together the dressing, make the mashed potatoes and the green bean casserole, and everything else is done. Man, I'm glad I never did this for a crowd, all jammed up in a single day. That would make me hate the holidays even more than retail did.
My only microwave surprise was with those gilded coffee mugs and tea cups. That little band of metal around the rim with nothing else to cut the energy makes for quite the show. It's 4th of July every day of the year!!!
At the Westin Hotel here in Huntsville, we prepared 75 turkeys with everything from soup to nuts for the Thanksgiving buffet. Strangely enough, whilst in Greenville, S.C., we prepared the same number of turkeys for the Greenville Rescue Mission buffet for the Homeless. For the Rescue Mission, a small miracle occurred when a guy showed up with his portable rotary oven [that he normally used for smoking pork shoulders] 2 days before Thanksgiving without which we would have never been able to accomplish what we did.
How many days in advance did you start cooking those turkeys? You know, I once thought about opening up a small cafe in a local business park. I had the location picked out, I had talked to an advisor to see how much capital would be required, etc. There were a few things that caused me to change my mind. At the top of the list was knowing that having to cook for a living would likely kill the pleasure I got out of it.
The rescue mission was easy which is why I call the appearance of that portable job a miracle. It had 8 shelves and each shelf held 5 turkeys with the underliners. Hotels and restaurants are a different beast. Preparation is normally started 4 or so days before the event and goes 24 hours a day. I mean, we’re not talking about just turkey here. A couple of steamship rounds, a few primes, a few fresh hams plus all that goes with it. Soup to nuts. So far as owning a restaurant, the key to success is a bridled ego that needs to be fed constantly with massive amounts of appreciative smiles. The “bridled” part of that ego is because there will be that one in a thousand slovenly idiot who should be burned at the stake and sent back to Hades (or McDonalds) for complaining about the food. At that point, we recognize that whilst everyone is a guest, some are just not “Preferred” guests and leave it at that.