Roast Turkey with Gravy, Cranberries & Passion Fruit sauce, Bacon Jam

Having a turkey for Christmas dinner is not something we do normally. Usually, we will be celebrating Christmas overseas. However, this year, we decided to celebrate Christmas at home. We prepared a turkey for a small house gathering at my sister's place.

Bacon jam, cranberries & passion fruit sauce, parma ham wrapped stuffing, turkey gravy with the main dish

For the recipe, I searched on the Internet for some ideas and decided to use various ideas and methods to form my own recipe.

First step is to find a suitable turkey and one that is small enough to fit my oven. I settled for one that is around 5kg.

The chosen one

I defrosted the turkey in the fridge for 3 days before taking it out of the package to clean it. For every 2.2kg, 24 hours is needed to thaw the bird.

Turkey that has been cleaned

After cleaning out the bird, I soak the turkey in 600ml of butter milk and seasoning (coarse salt, pepper, garlic, paprika, fresh thyme, sage and rosemary) for one day in the fridge.

Preparing a butter milk bath/spa with seasoning for the turkey

Turkey in butter milk bath. I also want such a good life!

The following day, the turkey is washed again to remove all the butter milk and pat dry. The bird is then dried by hanging it up or left in the fridge uncovered.

Hanging the bird up to dry after the butter milk bath!

After that, I followed part of what Gordon Ramsay did in his YouTube video.

Season the cavity of the bird with some salt and pepper, stuff in one onion (cut into half), one lemon and bay leaves.

In a mixing bowl, put in some butter (room temperature), salt, pepper, olive oil, zest of 2 lemons and their juice, 3 cloves of garlic (pureed) and chopped parsley. Stir to mix.

Use your fingers to loosen the skin from the meat on the thighs and breast. Insert some butter mixture into the areas where you have separated the skin from the meat. Massage the rest of the butter mixture onto the breast, legs and wings of the bird. Sprinkle some olive oil on to those areas.

Coated with seasoning

Put the seasoned turkey into the preheated oven at 220C for 10 mins. After 10 mins, take the turkey out of the oven and baste. Then cover the breast with streaky bacon. Then baste the bacon before putting it back in the oven at 180C. The wings are wrapped in foil to prevent charring before the turkey is cooked.

Bacon wraps to prevent the breast from charring

We take out the turkey to baste and rotate for even browning every 30 to 45 minutes. Cooking time is estimated to be 30 minutes for every kg of turkey. So for my turkey, it took 2 1/2 hours to complete. To see if the turkey is done, check the temperature at 3 places - the breast, the outer thigh, and the inner thigh. They must be at least 74C in these 3 places. If any of them is under 74C, put the bird back in the oven for another 15 to 20 minutes. To prevent the breast from overcooking, shield it with foil. We removed the bacon earlier because they were going to be charred. Use the bacon for making the gravy.

After the turkey is done, rest it for the same amount of time you take to roast it. For my case, I rested it for 2 1/2 hours. Keep the juice from the roasting tray for making the gravy later.

Nice and golden brown

For the gravy, chopped up the streaky bacon, onion and lemon (from the cavity of the turkey) and put them into a pan. Heat up the pan with some of the oil from the roasting tray first. Add in a few sprig of rosemary, 3 chopped tomatoes as well. To have more turkey flavour in the gravy, cut off the wings and backside of the turkey and put them in the pan too. Pour in the juices collected.

In Gordon's recipe, he used apple cider which we don't have, so we added 50ml of red wine instead. When the fluid is reduced by half, mashed up the solids in the pan to extract more flavours. Pour in some chicken stock and reduce again. Once reduced, sift the gravy. Your turkey gravy is now ready.

We also modified our bacon jam by adding in 50ml of red wine, one bay leave and a few sprigs of thyme. Simmer the bacon jam until it is the consistency you want.

Modifying the bacon jam for special occasion

For the cranberries & passion fruit sauce, we bring 340g of cranberries (fresh), 224g of sugar, 120g passion fruit pulp and 180ml of water to a boil over medium high heat.

Once boiling, reduce the heat to low and simmer until the cranberries have broken down and the sauce is thick. Cool it before serving.

We had the turkey at the gathering and the meat is tender even for the breast. Definitely a recipe to keep.

Enjoy!