Cooking: The Friendly Farmer Irish Free Range Bronze Turkeys do not need long cooking times.
1. Remove your Free Range Turkey from the fridge, leave it to stand at room temperature for 2 hours before cooking.
2. Place the free range
turkey, breast down, in a roasting tin and season the back of the bird
with salt and pepper. Most of the fat deposits are on the back of the
bird, which will percolate through the breast allowing the turkey to
cook in its own juices.
3. Place a large peeled onion in the cavity for extra flavour. We do not recommend stuffing the bird but to cook it separately.
4. We do not recommend using tin foil as this will result in a steamed skin rather than a crispy one.
5. Pre-heat
the oven to 180ºC (gas mark 4) before putting the turkey in the oven.
If you have a fan-assisted oven and cannot turn the fan off, reduce the
temperature to 160ºC.
6. Turn
the free range turkey over (to brown the breast) 30 minutes before then
end of cooking time. This is easily done by holding the end of the
drumsticks with oven gloves (be careful of hot fat). Season the breast
of the bird with salt and pepper and then insert your meat thermometer
halfway through the thickest part of the breast and place back in the
oven.
7. To
manually check, insert a skewer into the thigh and when the juices run
clear remove from the oven. If the juices are pink, place back in the
oven and keep checking at 10 minute intervals.
8. Allow to stand for 30 to 60 minutes before carving.
9. The
stock that is produced from a free range Bronze turkey is truly the
best. Please do not ruin it with gravy granules etc. Simply skim the
excess fat from the top of the stock and then scrape all the delicious
crispy bits off the bottom of the roasting tin. Re-heat the stock and
then carve the meat into the stock before serving.
Cooking Times