Carving the Perfect Turkey
Partial Video Transcript
Victoriously bearing the bird to its final roosting place, one last battle remains. And like most battles success lay in the choice of weapon. But that’s the stranger’s knife.
That’s right Marsha, I’ve been saving it all these years. Knife happy as I am the tool that separates the boy scouts from the Samurai, it’s nothing more than a 15 dollar hardware store electric knife. Start by separating the skin that holds the thigh quarter next to the breast, just go all the way down to the board. When you reach the joint, stop, put the knife down, and just take a regular paper towel, get a good grip on the thigh and press down until you hear the ball socket pop. Ooh! That’s quite a snap. I’ve got a hip that’ll do that. Then just cut through to the board. There, but that comes off in one chunk. Hey, that reminds me of that scene in Saving Private Ryan, when, you know, the guy…
Hey! Hey! Ray, we’re trying to eat here, okay. Okay, I usually serve the drumsticks whole and slice the meat off the thigh, so just come straight up the joint. The joint will pop as soon as you open it up a bit. Now, you can finally get to the breast. The first thing you want to do … and this is kind of the trick here, is make a base line, something that will allow you to make clean slices. So turn your knife sideways, parallel to the table and start an inward cut just above the wing joint and go straight in towards the rib and trace a line right up the side of the wishbone like that. Now you can just carve off those luscious slabs of love unhindered, keep them thin though, they’ll fall over, they’ll look better on the plate and they’ll be juicier. I like to use a fork to catch them with. Now, I can usually feed about … I don’t know … six people off of one half of a bird. If you don’t feel like going ahead and carving the whole thing right at the table … is this enough to get you guys going? Okay, great. I’ll show you a trick. A carcass is a big unruly shape and it’s tough to effectively wrap up and refrigerate, and besides, there are things in bones that … well, bacteria could mistake as an invitation. So, it’s best just to not mess with it. So I’m going to go ahead and take off the leg quarter, same as we did before, just reach down and give it a pop, as for the rest of the white meat, we’re going to start exactly the way we did back at the table, making that first cut at the wing line, then coming up by the side of the wishbone. There! But instead of going to slices, we’re going to find the outside of the keel bone, just by feeling for it and then cut right down the side. When you feel some resistance, turn out a little bit and you’ll be able to take it off.
Image Sources:
