Carving of turkey do require some special skills and attention as everyone do know how to cook or bake his or her turkey or you can find thousands of recipes on the internet which can teach you how to cook the turkey but carving is something different. So here, I am going to tell you that how you can carve your turkey professionally and easily so that it looks as good as it tastes when you serves it to your loved ones. For that, you should know the right tools and knives you will need during the carving and somewhat knowledge about the body parts of the turkey.
First of all, we will tell you about the knives and tools that can become handy in carving the kitchen. Generally, you need a pair of kitchen scissors, Flexible and sharp 10 inch slicing knife, and a carving fork for arranging and serving the meat, a warm and beautiful serving dish and last but not the least, an apron to keep yourself tidy and your clothes clean. This is a simple description of cutlery or tolls we do need to carve a chicken but one thing that you should kept in your minds is that these tools should be in their best shapes.
The kitchen scissors or shears should be sharp, balanced and made of appropriate materials. They should be opened and closed without much effort because it will ruin your turkey. The handles should easily fit in your finger and thumb and one of the blades should have a bone notch, which helps in easier cutting by gripping the bone. Some of the best models available in the market are “The Messermeister 8-Inch”, “The Zwilling Henckels Twin Select”, The All-Clad C3220908” and many others are available in the markets as well as online.
The Knife should be 10 inch long with a sharp blade and should not have the notches as they are not suitable and can ruin the meat. The best recommended models are “Henkels Professional”, Messermeister Meridian Elite” and etc. you can use any type of carving fork available and obviously a suitable and spacious dish, in which its easy to carve a turkey, to serve your turkey.
Know we will tell you that how you should carve your turkey easily and beautifully. But before that you should know that what parts are there in a turkey’s body. This will help you to learn and master the technique of turkey carving. Turkey consists of mainly six parts i.e. Breasts, Thighs, drumsticks, Wings and a neck. These are the parts that you will get after skinning and cleaning the turkey. The rest of the parts like Heart, Liver and etc are not used very much. Now we will come to the main part of our article that how we should carve our turkey quickly and efficiently and in a decent way. Following steps should be followed in this regard:
1- Remove your turkey from the baking oven and place it on a carving board. Rest it for at least 30 minutes to let the fluids settle in.
2- Now you can see the natural separator mark between the legs and the breast of the turkey. Now work your knife to the joints of the legs by cutting the skin covering the joints on both sides. Now slightly pull off the legs from the rest of the body and you will see the natural space there. Now run your knife around the joints and take both the legs off from the body in the same way.
3- Now you can see the meaty breasts in front of you. Just take your sharp knife and cut through the wish bone starting from the edge of the breasts to the neck. Separate it slightly with your thumb and work your knife deep inside through the back bone or wish bone until you reach the joint of the right side breast. Now cut through the joint and the right side breast will be separated on its own with the skin intact.
4- Wings are still on as they are supporting the body and helping us in carving the body easily and swiftly. Now take your left side breast in the same way as you have worked through the other one.
5- Now it’s time for the wings. Just press the wings and you will see the natural joints. Cut them through and here are your wings. Now separate the lower parts of both the wings in the same way as stated above.
6- We have separated all the parts of the turkey and know only carcass remains which can be used in a stock and you can take many other ideas from the internet.
7- Now pull the separated turkey leg over and you will see the joint between the drumstick and thigh. Cut through that joint and separate the drumstick from thigh. Now put your drum stick in your serving plate and now run your knife gently from one side of the thigh bone to the other and remove the bone making it a boneless. Repeat the same action with the other leg. It can be more easy to use your Kitchen scissors to separate the bone from the thigh.
8- Now take one breast at a time and start slicing it against the grain. The slices should not be very large in size and skin less.
9- Now slice your both thighs as well. Now warm your turkey for a minute in a microwave oven. It will not run dry as we have rested it before and it contains all the fluids which would have spilled off during cutting if we have started carving it immediately.
This is a very simple and easy technique to carve your turkey in the quickest and easiest way.
