A whole roasted turkey looks like a problem to solve. It is big, awkward and slippery, and everyone is watching you hold a knife over it.
It is not hard, and it is not a skill you need to practise. You do not carve a turkey where it sits. Break it into three pieces first - leg, wing, breast - then slice those on a flat board.
Do the whole job in the kitchen, the way the Williams Sonoma test kitchen does it here. Carving at the table is a nice picture and a bad method: you cut at a polite angle on a small board without using your hands, and you leave meat behind.
What you need
- A long slicing or carving knife, sharpened
- A carving fork
- A short boning knife for working around joints
- Kitchen shears
- A board with a juice groove
- A warmed platter
Which knife, and is an electric knife worth it
Two blades cover the job. The long slicing knife does the flat work on the board, one long pull through a half-breast or thigh. The boning knife does the joints, where you feel for a gap rather than cut. Sharpen both the day before. A dull blade crushes turkey and slides on wet meat, and sharpening knives at home takes ten minutes.
An electric knife is optional. It gives even breast slices with no technique, but it is no use around a joint and it shreds thigh meat.
How long to rest the bird
Give the turkey 30 to 45 minutes out of the oven before a knife touches it. The juices redistribute into the meat during that window. Carve it straight from the oven and most of them run onto the board. Tent it loosely with foil if the kitchen is cold. Wrapped tight, the skin goes soft.
That rest is the most useful half hour of the meal. It is when the gravy gets made and the potatoes get mashed. A big bird holds serving temperature for about an hour.
Take the bird apart before you slice anything
Order matters more than knife skill. Legs come off first: pulling a leg away from the body opens the hip joint and shows you where to put the knife tip. Wings are the same move at a smaller joint. The breast comes off last, whole, one piece per side.
That is where people go wrong. Slicing the breast on the bird gives short, uneven pieces and leaves meat on the ribs. Off the bird and skin side up on the board, you set the thickness of every slice, and cutting straight down across it cuts across the grain, which is what makes turkey eat tender.
Plating it so it still reads as a turkey
Warm the platter: turkey goes cold fast off the bone. Lay the meat out the way the bird was built: breast slices fanned down the middle with the skin showing, thigh slices along one edge, a drumstick at each end. Spoon pan juice over as it goes out.
What to do with the carcass
Keep the frame, wing tips and neck. Covered with cold water, an onion, a carrot and two bay leaves and simmered three or four hours, it makes better stock than any carton. Strain it, chill it, lift the fat off - that is noodle soup next week for nothing.
Common mistakes
- Carving too soon. Thirty minutes of rest is not wasted time.
- Sawing instead of slicing. Back-and-forth strokes leave a ragged edge. Use the whole blade in one long pull, the way you cut bread.
- Slicing with the grain. Long fibres eat stringy however well it was cooked.
- Cutting through bone. If a joint fights you, you are on bone, not in the gap. Move the tip a few millimetres.
- Leaving the oysters. Two nuggets of dark meat sit in the hollows of the back - the best bite on the bird.
Working through the rest of the meal? We also cover roasting the turkey and brining it first.
