

#HALF WING STEAM FULL#
What ensued was a full day of tending carefully to an icy mass of multiple stuffed birds in the laundry sink, the only place I could fit the thing to continuously run water over the giant frozen orb in hope of defrosting it enough to put into the oven (food safety police look away now). I showed up to the fancy butcher on the morning of our big Christmas party to collect the pre-ordered roast, only to discover it was not fresh as expected, but frozen solid. It was the worst experience of my cooking life. *In the spirit of enjoying glorious whole roasted turkeys, let me tell you about the time in my early twenties when I attempted a five-bird roast (like a turducken on steroids, with a quail and a spatchcock put in for good measure). I do enjoy the spectacle of a whole gloriously roasted bird* on the table, though, and I know for many of you in the Northern hemisphere it’s a true Thanksgiving and Christmas staple. Some years it’s a perfectly roasted chicken, others it’s a stuffed and rolled turkey breast roast, both of which take far less time to cook than a big turkey (if you like the idea of a stuffed turkey breast in your steam oven, you can find a recipe in my Christmas steam oven cookbook). Commonly, we have a mostly cold meal with festive salads, glazed and chilled ham, seafood and just one or two hot centrepiece dishes. We’ve celebrated many Christmases in 40☌/104☏ or more heat, so the idea of a huge bird sitting in the oven and further heating the already-steamy house all day long is too much. There are a few reasons for this, but mostly it’s because the weather here during the festive season is hot. To finish things off perfectly, my turkey has a deep brown maple-glazed skin, which lends a little sweetness and depth to the meat that you won’t get with butter alone.īefore we start out today, I have to confess: I don’t actually roast a whole turkey very often. I’ve rounded up some of the many ways to cook turkey in a steam oven below, but what I really want to share is my favourite method for roasting turkey using my steam oven, so every part of the bird is incredibly juicy and tender. Find out more about affiliate links and how they help this site.Įvery year, around this time, I start to get an avalanche of emails and Facebook messages from people asking how they should cook their Thanksgiving or Christmas turkey in a steam oven.
