Turkey is popularly served on different special and important occasions, especially in the United States and Canada. These occasions include Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. You can also find it in a lot of menus in different hotels and restaurants all over the world. Here, I have discussed 10 different ways of cooking turkey.
Turkey is similar to chicken. However, some say it is tastier than it. It is also widely considered to be healthier than pork and any other meat. That is why, nowadays, turkey meat is being processed. It can be sold as turkey sausage, turkey ham, or turkey bacon.
Turkeys are usually baked or roasted in an oven for several hours. However, there are other ways to cook and enjoy it. Here are the ten most common and popular ways of cooking turkey.
1. Deep fry
Deep-frying a turkey has become more and more popular in recent years. This method turns out to be one of the easiest ways of cooking turkey. It can give you an irresistibly tender and delicious turkey. It is a great alternative to traditional cooking methods.
2. Grilling
Grilling usually involves a significant amount of direct heat and tends to be used for cooking turkey meat quickly. This is suitable when you cook outdoors.
3. Braising
Braising is a cooking process in which tougher cuts of meat are cooked in liquid in order to add flavor and to moisten and tenderize the meat. It is similar to stewing except that less liquid is used. When food is stewed, it is submerged in liquid, and when braised, the food is only surrounded by the cooking liquid.
4. Smoking
Smoking is the process of flavoring, cooking, or preserving food by exposing it to smoke from burning or smoldering material, most often wood. Smoker machines are now widely used in restaurants and hotels, but others still prefer to use wood. Smoking turkey will take a long period of time; about 8 to 12 hours.
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5. Brining
Brining is a process similar to marinating in which meat or poultry is soaked in brine before cooking. Salt is added to cold water in a container, where the meat is soaked for 30 minutes until a few days. When bringing the turkey, the meat absorbs more moisture. This helps it stay more moist and juicy both during and after cooking.
6. Dehydrate or Jerky
Jerky is a kind of meat that is sliced into strips and trimmed of its fat. Finally, it is sprinkled with salt to keep it away from growing bacteria and is set to dry to remove its moisture. All of this is done to prevent the meat from spoiling.
7. Stewed
For those who don’t like to eat dry meat, you can cook stewed turkey also. A stew is a combination of solid food ingredients that have been cooked in liquid and served in gravy. You can easily search on the internet for the recipe for cooking stewed turkey.
8. Bacon- wrapped
If you are someone who loves to be creative, you will love this method. The bacon blanket is not only impressive to look at, but it adds a deep, rich flavor and keeps the turkey moist. You only have to learn the step-by-step process of how it is done.
9. Microwaved
Cooking turkey in a microwave is one of the easiest ways to process the meat. This is one of the most popular methods of cooking turkey, too. However, it is actually not advisable to do this since the size of the turkey is big that some parts of the meat will not be cooked well.
10. Roasting
Roasting is another popular way to cook a turkey. In roasting dry heat is used to cook the meat. The hot air envelops the food, cooking it evenly on all sides with a temperature of at least 150 °C (300 °F) from an open flame, oven, or another heat source. Roasting makes use of diffused heat indirectly, like one in an oven. This is suitable for slow cooking of meat in a larger, whole piece. It’s simple, convenient, and gives the meat a classic flavor
