How to Carve the Perfect Turkey for Christmas

Thanksgiving has passed and Christmas is near. Most people will be busy preparing their menu early. Having a really great food in this time of year is very crucial to every household and hence the intense preparation of everyone in the house. They might feel a lot of stress and panic especially if you got some guest visiting and wanted to taste your perfectly home-cooked turkey. I know it’ll be really hard but then panic and stressing out wouldn’t help, right? So just drink a glass of water (or wine) and read on.

Here is what you need to know before carving your Perfect Turkey:

Wash your hands first. This will prevent bacteria contaminating your turkey. A lot of people die in different foodborne illnesses. There’s a saying that goes, “Prevention is better than Cure”, which I agree. Learning food safety doesn’t stop there. Make sure that all your utensils and tools you’ll be using in this tutorial is clean especially the cutting board. If you just cut another meat with it, wash it with water and soap and rinse it well before using it.

Let your turkey rest for about 20 minutes after you taken it out of the oven. This will make all the juices go back to the turkey. This technique is called Basting. Basting is a cooking technique that involves cooking meat with its own juices, a sauce or a marinade. A lot of Chefs recommend doing this to your turkey.

 

Prepare the following:

  • A large sharp knife
  • Cutting board
  • Kitchen towel

Carve the Leg-Part First

Holding the large sharp knife, move it swiftly between the body and the legs all through the joint. If you are having trouble because it is hot, you can use the kitchen towel so that you can hold the turkey’s leg firmly. After you’re done cutting it you’ll now have the leg and the thigh part. The next thing you should do is to find the joint.

You can use your fingers to know where the joint might be and then cut the part with sweeping motion to separate the thigh and the leg. You can either serve the drumstick or slice it into thin layers. You can do the same with the thigh but it can be a little big in your plate so cut it following the bone then around it. Once you take out the bone, you can chop it with about a half an inch spaces.

 

Next… Carve the Turkey Crown

Slice it or remove the whole breasts are two things you can do in carving out the Turkey’s crown.

To slice the crown, make your knife land on the middle area in a slanting position then do a sweeping motion to cut across the meat. Make thin slices of the meat and do it again and again until you reached the breast bone.

If you want to remove the breast bone, run the knife to the right hand side of the breast bone and use your fingers to feel it. Cut it with the knife running along the wish bone to the back of the turkey.

Hold and push the meat away from the carcass by only using your knife cutting down up to the bone. Release it at the bottom and cut through the skin. Now you have the crown, all you need to do is to cut it to portions so it’s not too big for your family to consume.

So that’s it! Have fun carving your turkey.

 

Cess Padilla is a Senior SEO Specialist in the Philippines and currently handling the SEO for Learn2serve.com, a 360training.com portal for Alcohol Server License, food safety, Food Manager Certification and food handler certification training. She has been in the field for almost 3 years and a half now and has helped bring traffic and revenue to 360training portals. You can follow her on her twitter account @360cesspadilla.