Tom Kerridge

Pick up cooking tips for the big day with Tom’s festive edition of the BBC Good Food Podcast. We’re talking turkey and how to brine it

Turkey is my choice for Christmas. Everyone expects people in the food world to be doing goose or a full rib of beef. No, it’s turkey all the way; one that’s been reared for six months and well looked-after. Cook it properly and you get the most delicious flavour, and it’s the best cold meat for Boxing Day, too. It’s just fantastic.

I love goose, but there’s much less meat on it than a turkey. Goose has a huge, hollow cavity in the middle, and the breasts are nothing like that on a turkey.

The most amazing thing about turkey is the breast meat

– there’s so much of it. There are two ways of carving it o the cooked bird. You can either take each breast completely o the bone and carve into smaller slices, or carve wide slices straight from the whole bird. I braise the legs two days before as a coq-au-vin or stew, then flake the meat from it and roast the crown separately. You’ll have meat that’s full of flavour.

Make sure you brine the bird. It’s definitely worth brining the turkey one or two days before, as it seasons the meat and helps to keep it moist. There are two ways of brining a turkey – dry brining, like I’ve done on p73, or wet brining, where you submerge the bird in a brining liquid (salt dissolved in water). It’s worth going to your local garden centre and picking up a brand-new clean plastic box to put the turkey in for brining.

Always use a digital thermometer. They usually cost around £15-20 (see page 123 for our recommendation). It’s going to guarantee you get an amazing turkey that’s cooked beautifully, to just the right temperature – perfect, not over-cooked and wonderfully flavoured, too.

Find more turkey recipes on bbcgoodfood.com