One-Hour Turkey! | How to Roast a Perfect Turkey in 1 Hour | Food Wishes

Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with 1h hour turkey. That's right, I'm going to show you how to roast an entire turkey in 1 hour thanks to a couple minutes of knife and scissor work, plus a very hot oven. And besides saving time, we're going to get a super crispy skin along with moist succulent meat. Plus, we get to use the term spatchcock, which is never not fun. And to get started, we'll take a whole turkey, somewhere between 10 and 12 lbs, which is the size bird this technique works the best with. And I like to start by cutting off the wing tips by cutting down through where that joint hinges. And if you find the perfect spot the knife goes right through, which I never do. So, we'll often have to give the knife a tap to help it go through. And I do this because those just burn anyway and there's no meat on them and they're better in the stock. And once the two tips are removed, I also like to slice off the turkey butt, or as my family called it, the pope's nose. And we can use that in our stock as well. And once those two technically optional steps are done, we'll perform a technique called spatchcocking, which involves flipping the turkey over and using scissors to cut on either side of the backbone to remove it. And somewhere in the back of a drawer, I have some poultry shears. But instead, I decide to use some very dull, fairly lightweight scissors, which I can't say makes this easy, but is definitely doable. And by the way, don't let those hairy forearms fool you. I'm not as strong as I look. But even with the worst case scenario, scissor choice, you will be able to get this done. And once we get past the thighs, everything gets easier to cut. And once we're past this point and we continue cutting to the top of the bird, our scissors are going to go between one of two spots. Okay, if they go between the backbone and the shoulder blade, they will slice right through. But if they go between the shoulder blade and the shoulder joint, which is what's happening on this side, your scissors will not go all the way through. And you'll have to bend the backbone up like this so that we can finish the cut and remove the backbone. And if you do it that way, the shoulder blades going to be exposed, which is good because we're going to remove them. But if you cut through like on that first side, we will simply cut through the meat holding it on. And once those have been exposed, we'll simply dislocate those from the shoulder joints and either yank them off with our hands or cut them off with a knife. Right? That's up to you. I mean, you are after all the Dracula of removing the scapula. But anyway, the point is by removing those, our turkey is going to be easier to flatten out. And we won't have to do that by smashing it with a heavy cast iron pan, which is pretty much how everybody else does it. And then to finish this spatchcocking process, I usually like to make a small cut into the cartilage right at the tip of the breast bone. And if this was a chicken, we could grab either side and we could bend up and we could pop that breast bone right out. But with a turkey, that's not happening, which is fine. It doesn't need to since all we'll do is grab either side of the rib cage and bend that down until it separates and flattens, at which point we can flip this over and show what a perfectly spatchcoed turkey looks like. And sure, it might be fun to smash this with a giant cast iron pan, but who knows how those shoulder blades are going to fracture. So, I think this method gives us something more uniform and better looking. And once all the hard work's done, if you can even call it that, we will flip it over and begin a very generous seasoning, which on the inside is going to be both kosher salt as well as a little bit of freshly ground black pepper. And then eventually when we flip this over, we'll just do salt on the skin side. I didn't want any black specks distracting from what's going to be a beautiful golden brown finish. And by the way, the salt measurement in the recipe is not going to be a typo, right? Generally, for a spatchcock bird this big, I want to do about a tablespoon of salt per four pounds of meat, or in other words, about a tablespoon and a half per side. And as I've gotten older, I've decided a simply seasoned bird is the best way to go. But having said that, this 1 hour roasting time technique I'm showing you will work the same no matter how you're going to flavor this. And if you like to do things like brine the turkey ahead of time or apply some kind of spice rub, please feel free to do that. And that's it. Once our turkey is seasoned, we can move on to prepping a sheetpan, which I'm going to do by laying over a large piece of heavy duty aluminum foil. And once that's in place, we'll place over a sheetpan sized baking rack. And if you don't have or can't get the large size of foil, just two strips of the regular size will work, but it really should be heavy duty. And as you can see, we definitely want about four or five inches of extra foil going past the edge of the pan because once we transfer our turkey on, skin side up, of course, the ends of the wings and the ends of the legs are going to be going past the pan a little bit. So, to play it safe, I'll take some extra pieces of foil and make sort of a little bit of a ledge to go underneath them. And I'll tuck that between the rack and the foil underneath. And then we'll simply sort of bend and curl that up a little bit. And that way if we have any grease dripping, it will be funneled down into the pan and will not drip onto the bottom of your oven. And that's it. Once those extra pieces are placed on, I'm going to go around the outside. Around the outside, around the outside, sort of folding and crimping that foil up. Again, making sure anything that drips is going to go towards the center into the pan. And that's it. Our turkey is now ready to place into the upper center of a 450°ree oven for about 1 hour. or until we get to our desired internal temp, which for me is about 150 to 155 in the middle of the thigh. And if everything goes according to plan, it should look like this. Oh yeah. Now that is a gloriously gorgeous bird. And if you've ever wondered what perfectly crispy turkey skin sounds like, here you go. Oh yeah. Fork don't lie. And then, yes, you definitely want to let this rest a little bit while you pull together your sides and sauces. And once we're ready to serve, we'll transfer that onto a cutting board. And I'm actually going to turn this so it fits on the board a little better. And this spatchcock technique really is great, but it does produce a lot of crotch, right? Some might say too much crotch, but that is easily fixed with some rosemary sprigs and maybe a few edible flowers. And once that was looking a little less disturbing, I grabbed a fork and knife and sliced in for the official taste. And if you're wondering if a turkey like this cooked at such a high heat for only an hour is just as good as the one cooked low and slow for like 3 hours, well, the answer is no. It's actually much better. And I was trying to find an angle here where you could see that glistening moist meat, which I didn't quite accomplish, so you'll have to take my word for it. And if any part of this turkey was going to be dry, it would be that breast meat near the surface. And yet, it wasn't. So, I was thrilled with the texture. And the taste was amazing as well. Even though this was only seasoned with salt and a little touch of pepper. So, the white meat checked out. And I'm going to go ahead and cut into the thigh to prove that came out just as good. And by the way, even if you cook the dark meat to 155, which is perfectly safe to eat, there's still going to be spots that are naturally pink. So, do not let that throw you off. And you can just tell grandma to relax. There's no problem. And as much as I love those breast and thigh samples, the best part of a 1-hour turkey is by far those wing flats. All right. Crunchy on the outside, anxious near the bone, and I'm a little bit mad at evolution that there's only two per bird. I mean, have you seen some of those dinosaurs turkeys evolve from? Couldn't we have gotten a few extra wings? But anyway, that's really my only complaint. And if you want a perfectly cooked turkey that tastes every bit as good, if not better, than the classic method, then I really do hope you give this a try soon. So, please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts, a printable written recipe, and much more info as usual. And as always in joy.