Why you should eat turkey liver for Xmas, by Roux Jr

‘Absolutely stunning’

IF you had turkey breast for your Christmas dinner, Michel Roux Jr has some advice for you: Next year, eat the bird’s liver instead.

The chef, who has two Michelin stars, thinks turkey and chicken breast meat is ‘awful’ despite its proclaimed health benefits but the offal is much better.

Speaking about the breast, he told the BBC Good Food Show: ‘It’s a slab of dry, white protein. It’s awful. Horrible.

‘And unless you’re a bodybuilder, why else would you want to eat just pure protein like that? There is no pleasure in it. Eating is pleasure, or should be a pleasurable moment, and the thigh meat of the chicken is far more flavourful than a chicken breast, for me.’

The 57-year-old , who runs the Mayfair restaurant Le Gavroche, made a case for cooking the turkey’s ‘fantastic’ giblets rather than throwing them away.

‘The livers of a turkey are absolutely stunning,’ he said. ‘They are so so good. Turkey livers on toast, oh my word. The hearts, the hearts are so good.

‘If you want lean meat then there can be no leaner than heart or liver. Heart is so lean, it’s just pure protein.’

Roux, the son of celebrity chef and restaurateur Albert Roux, also offered some rather unconventional beauty advice.

‘If you want make your nails and hair grow better, then eat collagen – so eat pigs’ feet, and veal feet, veal trotters – full of collagen,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t be better for you.’