Hey guys!
Need some help in cook
We need more context for this. What are you cooking? What sort of ‘doneness’ are you looking for? Thickness? What you’re hoping to achieve?
Im try to ask some adive on cooking 6 boneless turkey breast and 6 bonless thigh and legs. Do one 800 watt will work?
I was trying to post this question but the app keeps hanging. Cant even see what im typing.
Turkey is not my thing I’m afraid. Perhaps @chatnoir can help you out.
When sous vide cooking you’re cooking to the temperature of your water bath, the food can never get hotter than that. So the thickness of your meat, or whatever you’re cooking, becomes one of the important factors in working out how long you’ll need to leave it in the bath.
Sorel, congratulations on providing me with some detail with your request for help.
Unfortunately there’s not enough detail in your request for me to give you definitive directions, but i’ll do as best i can.
You are certainly one brave hombre to embark on such an arduous culinary journey, particularly seemingly without map or compass. You should easily serve 100 and have leftovers. I hope that’s enough.
So, you have fabricated turkey rolls. Hopefully you have used the reversed-and-twin-tied technique for the breasts. That means you have taken the pair of breasts from each bird and tied them together inside to inside reversing the ends. That results in an even cooking shape that both looks and slices magnificently.
Good going, and you are off to a great start!
And you have the carcasses, at least at much as will fit in your largest stock pot, simmering slowly, about 180F -190F. Don’t boil it.
Good. That stock is going to be wonderful.
Now then, a worst case scenario would be you have combined individual pieces of breast meat and rolled them around leg meat and tied it all together. We’ll deal with that later.
Before that I will need to go and get myself a stiff drink.
A slightly better arrangement would be to tie the leg meat around the breast meat, but that would look weird and it seldom happens. A side by side breast and leg meat arrangement is the usual industrial solution, but then they vastly overcook the rolls so the result has the strange texture of a turkey mortadella sausage.
The easiest way to manage the smaller pieces of boneless leg meat is to go and beg for some "jet-net’ from your trusted regular butcher. It’s like elastic fish-net stockings for meat, only not so sexy looking. You tie off one end and stuff it full of meat pieces while attempting to keep them similarly aligned grain wise. It’s best done in a 48 oz. tomato juice can with both ends removed. Then snug up the open end and tie it closed. Now you package and cook that nice uniform cylinder of meaty goodness. When done, snip the length of the netting with your kitchen shears, remove the netting, and the meat usually holds its shape for slicing. Don’t sear it. If i were doing it, i would break up the slices for service because circles of any meat looks strange.
Sorel, as you know turkey is a such a challenging item to cook well because the white meat and dark meat are best cooked at different temperatures. So you have to make compromises. Thus the challenge of cooking combination turkey rolls. Just ask any hospital or school cafeteria cook. The outcome is either properly cooked white meat and under-cooked dark meat, particularly if the dark meat is all in the interior of the rolls so the rolls look pretty, - or the reverse with its resulting dry breast meat and succulent leg meat.
You say the turkey’s are medium to large size, so i am guessing you have about 15 to 20 pounders and your rolls are 3 1/2 to 4-inches thick and i am hoping you have three of them. You could have informed us, but it’s too late for that now. That amount of meat is about enough to cook at one time. Better get started on the breast meat rolls.
I’d cook the individually packaged breast rolls at 145F for 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 hours. About an hour per inch of thickness, plus a little. That will result in tender and moist, very slightly pink meat. It’s fully cooked. Put gravy on it as you serve if you think some guests will panic. It will be the best turkey they ever had.
I’m am certain there are specifications somewhere on the Anova site that will advise you on the maximum amount of water their device can manage. You go find it if you need to know. Maybe even share your knowledge with us. My Anova nicely handles about 4 gallons of water, 16 litres, at a time with ample circulation. That will process your meat in two batches.
Now on to the leg meat.
The next time you cook for all your in-laws, i find the leg meat cooks better when left on the bone. I only buy locally grown pasture-raised turkey meat, quite a different animal from the grocery store variety. The thighs on the birds i get are similar to those of a champion heavy weight Olympic power lifter. Huge, and solid. I cook them at 165F for 8 hours, usually after a 2 hour 200F hickory and maple smoke. And they are always superb! So extrapolating to what you probably have, i reckon half that time will likely do you with boneless leg meat cooked in another batch. I’d stay with the higher temperature to get tenderness.
Now, if you have made combination breast and leg meat rolls i would cook them as if they were just leg meat and live with the over cooked breast meat. It’s what most people are familiar with anyway. Next time, please cook them separately.
I hope this helps, - do well.
Whew.