Cooking Turkey With Marco Pierre White

Finding out how to Cook Turkey with Marco Pierre White, was not something I’d expected to learn inside a football stadium.

Imagine if you will, twelve ladies squeezed into an intimate space with a knife wielding chef in his Chelsea kitchen (within the grounds of Chelsea FC no less).

And meet the star of the show, this unsuspecting bird who is about to get the Marco Pierre White treatment.

Teaching us how to take the chore out of turkey, Marco Pierre White waves his cleaver and deftly removes giblets.

How to cook turkey masterclass with Marco Pierre White

Marco is feeling domestic today and enthuses about Paxo and peas. Seriously – Paxo is perfectly adequate as stuffing rather than making your own, particular if you mix it with good sausagemeat. On vegetables he advises matter-of-factly, “Kids like peas. And they’re easy.”

But first the cheffy bit:

Bam! Bam! Gasps from everyone.

Fortunately Marco’s hands are still attached afterwards. I can’t say the same about the turkey…

“Don’t be scared of turkey” says Marco, “Treat it like a big, big chicken.”

Breaking it down into individual joints, crown joints deliver quality and flavour whilst being quicker to cook.

“Most people don’t want the brown meat,” he adds “So why not remove those bits and cook them separately.”

The lovely bones.

Marco recommends to roast poultry bones and then simmer in the oven in water to make stock for gravy. You can use chicken for this.

Ready to get stuffed.

Removing your turkey from the fridge for an hour so it’s closer to room temperature when it goes in the oven means it will cook quicker too.

And a quick brush with molten butter.

What could be simpler than that?

The crown joint gets popped in the oven.

Meanwhile the thigh joints get stuffed too. If you’re on a budget you could just do several turkey thigh joints and make gravy from roast chicken wings.

Stuffing goes under the turkey skin.

And a quick brush. (Feel free to +1 in this embedded google plus widget if you like my animated effect above!)

And a flick of salt (preferably from a great height for dramatic effect).

Time now to make your own cranberry sauce. Use half sugar to cranberries and bear in mind frozen fruit releases more liquid.

Marco suggests port and orange for the perfect cranberry sauce.

Now for the serious knife waving interval.

It’s like watching a conductor with a baton.

We’re all quite mesmerised by now. It’s a bit like when Rik Mayall as Captain Flashheart turns up making the women go gooey in Blackadder II.

He loves waving his knives around does Marco. It’s all quite Shakespearian really.

Or Dexter. Whichever analogy you prefer.

The lovely bones and their juices get squeezed through one of those conical sieve thingies. I was too embarrassed to ask the correct name.

OMG freakin’ awesome gravy. I dare not show my husband this gravy because he’ll want me to make it too.

A quick sniff in the corner. Marco is scandalised we’ve asked for roast potatoes when there aren’t any.

I’m not giving you potatoes he hisses.

So it’s down to the gravy to float our boats instead.

Which indeed it does.

Another excuse to wave knives. Sharpening them.

Whilst delivering tips such as meat probes being the future of domestic cooking.

Too often we blame the bird and if only we had a meat probe we’d have confidence to get our turkey out the oven earlier safe in the knowledge its centre had reached the appropriate temperature.

We’re looking to reach 66c for breast meat and 72c for thigh.