December is a month full of festivities, and with Christmas just around the corner, you just cannot do without a sumptuous Christmas dinner which doesn’t include a perfect Christmas turkey. Although roasting a fourteen pound bird is a mammoth task, but if done with precision, you can get a perfectly roasted turkey that would definitely tease your taste buds this Christmas.
So, let us get down to the business of creating a perfect dish of roasted turkey in maple syrup.
Ingredients:
- A fresh turkey with its neck removed and set aside for stock.
- Black pepper and salt
- Unsalted butter- 6 tablespoon
- Cornbread for the stuffing of turkey
- Grated ginger- 1 tablespoon
- Maple syrup- ¼ cup
- Flour- one and half tablespoon
- A cup of red wine if you want, can be a Riesling wine
- you can use stock of turkey or even a plain broth of chicken
- You can also use two to three cups of red and green grapes. Make sure they are seedless.
Procedure:
- Firstly, wash the turkey completely with cold water and keep patting and drying it with the use of paper napkins. Meanwhile heat the oven to 425 degrees.
- After washing the turkey, tuck its wing under the body and season its neck with black pepper and salt.
- Commence the stuffing of the turkey by filling the neck cavity of the bird. Secure the flap of the neck by using toothpicks.
- Hold the turkey upright so that its body gets filled with the stuffing as well.
- Tie their legs together with a twine and is you want more stuffing, then stuff it more into the neck cavity until it bulges out. Add pepper and salt over the turkey and keep it in a roasting pan.
- Cut a layer of cheesecloth, similar to the size of the turkey and soak it into 4 tablespoon of unsalted butter completely. After soaking it completely, place the cloth over the turkey in the roasting pan.
- Put the turkey in the oven, set the timer of 30 minutes and let it roast. With the butter and turkey fat accumulated in the pan, baste it. After sometime reduce the oven heat to 350 degrees and cover the turkey with aluminum foil.
- After the above steps, roast the bird for 30 more minutes and then baste again with the butter. Continue the roasting and basting procedure for atleast an hour till the meat is tender and succulent. The total process takes about 3 hours.
- Just make a note that during the last hour of roasting the turkey, take grated ginger and squeeze out its juice into a pan. Add 1 tablespoon of unsalted butter and some maple syrup into it and keep it over the heat until it is bubbling. Then remove it from the heat.
- Remove the aluminum foil and cloth from the turkey, remove the turkey from the oven and brush the turkey with the glaze for the last half hour. Let it rest for 30 minutes.
- Take a bowl and add 1 tablespoon of butter into it, add flour and mix them together. Now, take the juices from the roasting pan in which the turkey was roasted and keep it aside in a glass.
- In a roasting pan, pour some red wine and keep it on medium heat over a stove. Keep stirring the wine with a spoon. Add the turkey juices into it Cook the wine until it is reduced. Now add the turkey or chicken stock into add and cook again until is reduced for about 6 minutes.
- Get cheesecloth and line it on a colander, and pass the above made gravy through it. Pour it once again into a small pan and add the mixture of flour and butter into it. Let this mixture simmer on medium low heat until it is a bit viscous. Then add the unseeded red and green grapes into this gravy as garnishing and serve it with the roasted turkey.
Serve this delicious and sumptuous Christmas turkey dinner to your family and friends and prepare to be gobsmacked by the bunch of compliments which would be showered upon you by your near and dear ones on Christmas!
