Sous Vide Whole Stuffed Turkey

This sous vide whole stuffed turkey is full of flavor from the sausage stuffing within and crispy without from a quick roast in the oven. Its spicy rubbed golden skin is divine! 

As I mentioned in my recipe post for sous vide roast leg of lamb, with a sous vide precision cooker you will never, ever suffer through a dried out roast again. 

In fact even turkey, notorious for uneven cooking, results in tender moist dark AND light meat. It is easy if you follow my recipe below, cooking your bird long and slow, followed by a quick oven roasting to get that golden skin everyone fights over.

The secret to cooking a whole bird with a sous vide precision cooker is the stuffing, which not only adds flavor and moisture but, almost as importantly, fills the cavity which makes it possible for the turkey to remain submerged. 

If you are a fan of sous vide precision cooking, you might want to take a look at my chicken crown roast and tender sliceable pork roast as well.

Sous Vide Whole Stuffed Turkey

Very important: you must start one day ahead of when you want to roast and serve your turkey. It is essential to allow time for the seasonings to become one with the bird and for the skin to dry out before using the sous vide precision cooker, if you want crispy golden skin. And who doesn't? 

Ingredients

For the turkey:

1 fresh or frozen turkey (completely thawed - Approx weight 8 lb 5 oz or 3.8kg)

Dry rub (See below)

1/2 teaspoon poultry seasoning

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

For the dry rub:

2 tablespoons poultry seasoning 

(if poultry seasoning is unsalted) 1 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon cayenne

For the stuffing:

2 medium onions

2-3 ribs celery

3 slices smoked bacon

2 tablespoons butter

1 1/2 cups or 135g fresh breadcrumbs

1 1/2 lb or 700g sausage meat

2 teaspoons poultry seasoning

1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

zest 1/2 orange

salt to taste*

Extra equipment:

Sous vide precision cooker

Large vessel that can hold enough water to cover your turkey. I used my Coleman cooler/ice chest, which works beautifully if you have something big to sous vide.

Method

Clean the turkey, removing the top part of the tail and any stray feathers inspector 12 might have missed. I have needle-nose jewelry pliers that work great for removing feathers (and, by the way, pin bones in fish.)

Season the turkey inside and out with the dry rub.  

Mix the 1/2 teaspoon of the poultry seasoning with the 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda and sprinkle it on the top of the bird from a great height, so you get an even layer. According to Serious Eats, this helps the skin dry so it will super crispy when roasted. 

Place your turkey in a casserole dish, breast up, uncovered in the refrigerator for 24 hours. 

You can now prepare the stuffing. 

Cut the bacon into small pieces. Fry it until crispy in a medium sized pan. Meanwhile, finely chop your onions and celery. 

Remove the bacon from the pan and set aside. Add the butter to the pan and sauté the chopped vegetables in the butter and bacon fat until softened. Leave to cool. 

In a large bowl, combine the bacon, sausage meat and the rest of the stuffing ingredients, along with the sautéed onion and celery. 

Fry a small piece of the stuffing and check the salt. Add salt to the stuffing, if necessary, and mix well. Refrigerate the stuffing until needed. 

The following day, use the stuffing to fill the cavity and the neck. 

Tuck the skin flaps in to cover the stuffing as best you can. 

The stuffing is essential to displace air and conduct heat through the bird as well as adding flavor. 

Use poultry string or silicone bands to truss the legs of the turkey together and to hold the wing tips close to the bird. 

Place the turkey in a 2 1/2 gallon bag and submerge it carefully in water to remove as much of the air inside as possible. If there is still some air inside of the turkey, it might want to float. If your bird wants to float, put a brick in a plastic bag and lean it against the turkey to keep it submerged. I’ve cooked various whole birds with this method and sometimes they need a brick and sometimes they don’t! As you can see, this particular turkey behaved without one. 

Sous vide at 160°F or 71°C for six hours.

When the timer goes off, remove the bag from the water bath. Carefully remove the turkey from the bag, holding it legs down so liquid can drain out of it and back into the bag. Reserve any juice left behind to add to gravy later. It's not so attractive right now but worry not! After roasting it will be much prettier. 

Heat your oven to 450°F or 232°C. Remove the silicone bands or string and pat the bird dry with paper towels, being careful not to break the skin. 

Heat a large iron skillet on the stovetop and place the turkey in it. Roast in your very hot oven for 8-10 minutes to brown the skin, turning the pan around midway through to ensure even browning. 

Let it rest for 10 minutes, carve and serve.

Enjoy! 

It’s Multicooker Monday when I join a group of blogger friends sharing recipes using small kitchen appliances. Check them out! Many thanks to our host and leader, Sue of Palatable Pastime. 

• Crockpot Bread from Sid's Sea Palm Cooking
• Instant Pot Butter Beans and Sausage from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Instant Pot Cheesy Taco Shells from Making Miracles
• Slow Cooker Pot Roast from Palatable Pastime
• Instant Pot Spaghetti and Meatballs from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Jamaican Coconut & Beans Rice - Pressure Cooker from Sneha's Recipe
• Sous Vide Whole Stuffed Turkey from Food Lust People Love

Multicooker Monday is a blogger group created by Sue of Palatable Pastime for all of us who need encouragement to make better use of our small appliances like slow cookers, Instant Pots, Air Fryers, rice cookers and sous vide machines. We get together every third Monday of the month to share our recipes. If you are a food blogger who would like to post with us, please request to join our Facebook group.

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Roasted Bruschetta Pattypan Squash

This roasted bruschetta pattypan squash - filled with ripe tomatoes, garlic and basil splashed with balsamic vinegar - makes a delicious and gorgeous main course for any special occasion. Added bonus: Even your vegetarian and vegan family and friends can enjoy it!

I can’t tell you how excited I was when I came across two lovely large pattypan squash grown by a local farmer. I didn’t even know they grew that big! Prior to these, the pattypans of my experience were either tiny baby squash or more typically, they were about four or five inches across. 

Special squash deserves to be made into a special dish. I couldn’t bring myself to cut it up and spoil its beauty. Stuffing seemed to be the best answer. With the tomatoes so wonderful and ripe, I wanted them to shine too. 

Except for the chopped squash, this stuffing is exactly the same topping I put on toasted baguette slices for our family favorite classic bruschetta, hence the title. The wonderful bruschetta filling infuses the squash with great flavor as it roasts to golden perfection. 

Roasted Bruschetta Pattypan Squash

If you can’t find large pattypan squash, use whatever squash is your favorite. Don’t worry about the weight of your tomatoes. A little more or less won’t really matter. 

Ingredients

1 large pattypan or scallop squash (mine weighed 1 lb 9 oz or 650g)

For the filling: 

1 large clove garlic

4 small tomatoes (mine weighted about 9 oz or 260g)

7-8 leaves fresh basil, plus extra for garnish, if desired

2 tablespoons olive oil, plus a little extra for the baking pan

1 tablespoon best quality balsamic vinegar

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Optional to serve: 

Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Method

Cut the top off of the squash. Use a spoon to scrape the seeds and fibers out of the middle.

Use a sharp knife to trim off the squash to enlarge the cavity. Chop the squash bits you trim off and set them aside. We’ll add these to the bruschetta filling.

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C. Lightly grease a baking pan or iron skillet. 

Remove the cores from the tomatoes and chop them into small pieces. Put a couple of paper towels on your cutting board to catch the juice that will inevitably pour off. Otherwise you’ll find it dripping off the work surface onto your feet. Not that that has ever happened to me. 

Mince the garlic. Roll the basil leaves together and slice them thinly into strips. Then chop the rolled slices roughly. 

Put the tomatoes, chopped squash bits, garlic and basil into a small mixing bowl. 

Add in the olive oil, vinegar, salt and several good grinds of black peppers. Stir well to combine. 

Spoon the filling into the pattypan squash.

Roast in your preheated oven for 55-60 minutes or until the squash is cooked through. 

Remove from the oven. Sprinkle with basil strips. 

Cut the squash into quarters to serve and let your guests add grated Parmesan, as desired. 

Enjoy! 

Happy Sunday FunDay, where we share recipes your families will love every Sunday. Today our theme is Squash it to me! - perfect for the season. Many thanks to our host, Rebekah of Making Miracles. 

• Autumn Harvest Fall Soup by Our Good Life
• Beef and Butternut Squash Chili by Making Miracles
• Couscous-Stuffed Red Kuri Squash by Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Creamy Pumpkin Soup with Yogurt by Cooking With Carlee
• Curried Squash Soup by Palatable Pastime
• Lal Bhoplyache Bharit /Red Pumpkin Raita by Sneha's Recipe
• Roasted Bruschetta Pattypan Squash by Food Lust People Love
• Seared Scallops with Spaghetti Squash by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Spaghetti Squash 2 Ways by Sid's Sea Palm Cooking

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Rolled Pepperoni Pizza Loaf #BreadBakers

A simple pizza dough is transformed into a rolled pepperoni pizza loaf, with mozzarella cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and garlic, freshly baked and ready to slice and serve.

You’d have to have been reading here a long time (more than seven years! Anybody?) to know my inspiration for this stuffed bread loaf. Madam Wong’s pizza rolls look like cinnamon rolls, but they are rolled up with rice tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese. They are one of my favorite things in the whole wide world.

I’ve long thought it would be fun to bake a similar bread in a loaf shape instead of rolls so the filling would make a pretty spiral when it was sliced. Rather than a wet sauce, this time I’ve used soft sun-dried tomatoes and added pepperoni because, well, pepperoni is fabulous.

Rolled Pepperoni Pizza Loaf

If you don’t have fresh oregano, by all means substitute dried. Just a light sprinkle – perhaps a 1/2 teaspoon will do. 

Ingredients

For the dough:

3/4 cup or 180ml lukewarm water (not hot)

1 teaspoon active-dry yeast

1/4 teaspoon sugar

2 cups or 250g strong bread flour, plus more if needed

1 teaspoon salt

Drizzle olive oil for the dough bowl

For the filling:

3 oz or 85g sliced pepperoni

5 oz or 142g mozzarella cheese, shredded 

1/4 cup, firmly packed, or 45g soft (ready to eat) sun-dried tomatoes

2-3 sprigs fresh oregano

1 clove garlic, finely minced 

For baking:

1 egg, beaten

1 oz or 28g freshly grated Parmesan

Method

Put the yeast and sugar in a bowl. Pour in the warm water and give it a stir. Set aside for a few minutes. It should start to get foamy on top. 

In a large bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer, whisk the flour and salt together. Pour in the yeast mixture and mix well to form a soft dough.

Using the dough hook on the stand mixer, or kneading by hand against the counter, knead the dough on  until it forms a smooth, slightly tacky ball that springs back when you poke it, 5 to 8 minutes. If the dough sticks to the bowl or your hands, add a tablespoon of flour at a time until it’s easier to work with.

Avoid adding too much flour if possible. I ended up adding two tablespoons this time. This is the sort of thing that can change with your flour and the humidity in the air. 

If you're planning to make the pepperoni pizza loaf today, then give the dough a rise. Clean out the mixing bowl, coat it with a little oil, and transfer the dough back inside. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a damp kitchen towel and let the dough rise until doubled in size, 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

 

Alternatively, you can store the dough in the fridge and make the stuffed loaf the next day. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate. 

Take the dough out of the refrigerator about half an hour before you are ready to bake.

Line a 9x5 in or 23x13cm loaf pan with baking parchment. 

Pull the leaves off of your sprigs of oregano and cut the sun-dried tomatoes into skinny slices. Mix them both together with the mozzarella and garlic. 

Roll out the pizza dough into a rectangle, about 10x14 in or 25x35cm. 

Cover it almost to the sides with the cheese mixture, then the pepperoni. 

Roll up from the short side. The pepperoni don’t really roll up well but do your best. Tuck the sides over slightly to contain the filling.

 Transfer the roll to your prepared loaf pan, seam side down. 

Cover lightly with a cling film and leave to rise in a warm place for about 45 minutes. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C. Brush the beaten egg over the top of the loaf.

 Sprinkle on the Parmesan cheese. 

Bake in your preheated oven at for 20 to 25 minutes or until the top and sides are golden. Let the loaf cool on a wire rack before slicing it to serve. 

Enjoy!

This month my Bread Baker friends are sharing recipes for stuffed breads. Check them out below! Many thanks to our host Renu of Cook with Renu.

• Coconut Buns by Magical Ingredients
• Callaloo Loaf by Passion Kneaded
• Double Cheese Fatayers by Ambrosia
• Meatball Stromboli by Palatable Pastime
• Pepperoni Rolls by Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Ricotta Calzones with Spinach and Sausage by Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Rolled Pepperoni Pizza Loaf by Food Lust People Love
• Sourdough Custard buns by Zesty South Indian Kitchen
• Stuffed Potato Kulcha by Sneha's Recipe
• Sweet Potato and Apple Braid by What Smells So Good?
• Taco Tuesday Calzone by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Whole Wheat Vegetarian Calzones by Cook with Renu

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all our lovely bread by following our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated after each event on the #BreadBakers home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

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