Steam your turkey like Jacques Pepin

I’ve tested recipes for many great chefs, but my most outstanding assignment was when I was asked by the New York Times to test Jacques Pepin’s recipe for Thanksgiving turkey. When we conferred on the phone he was enormously kind and easy to talk to, and he did not mind my repeated calls and questions. He allowed one of our staff to visit him at his home, who wrote about that memorable afternoon.

Though this all happened nine years ago, I use Jacques Pepin’s method to this day. I wrote about how to steam your turkey like Jacques Pepin – and you can find his recipe – in a New York Times Diner’s Journal blog here. And because it makes Thanksgiving dinner so much easier than brining or long cooking with constant basting, it’s a recipe I highly recommend.

The Why and the How

Steamed turkey doesn’t sound appealing, but the turkey is actually roasted after the steaming. There are two excellent reasons to cook your turkey this way. One is that it lets you do most of the work the day before you serve it, and provides a nice amount of broth for gravy that you can also prepare ahead. The other, even better, reason is that it ensures a moist bird, breast to drumstick.

The main drawback to this method is that the bird must be steamed in a pot with a secure lid – no foil lids or jerry-rigged parchment. That confines the size to about 16 pounds. I have solved that problem by cooking two birds, and I admit to cramming a somewhat larger bird into a pot to make it fit.

I always steam my turkey the day before I serve it, then refrigerate it overnight and roast it the next day. I make my stuffing the day before as well, spread it in a casserole dish to cool it quickly, and refrigerate overnight. Cranberry sauce is, of course, is made ahead of time.

Making it even easier

I cheat a little on this recipe. Chef Pepin calls for cutting off the ends of the drumsticks, which I did diligently for years though I don’t like the look of the denuded ends. Removing the ends of the drumsticks allows you to pull out the sinews later, a chef’s nicety. One day I left them and decided the sacrifice was worth it.

The recipe describes taking the turkey from steaming to the oven. I steam mine the day before I roast it because that’s what the Chef told me he does. If Jacques Pepin does it, that’s good enough for me.

I brush the roasting bird with the glaze provided by the recipe, but I don’t make the white wine sauce. I like lots of gravy, and I always make a large quantity, doubling Mark Bittmans’ recipe for Make-Ahead Gravy. 

Turkey any time

I really like to cook a turkey. The fragrance of a cooking turkey is the essence of comfort, up there with baking bread. I love chestnut stuffing with fresh sage, and I cook some in the roasting bird as well as separately in a casserole.

My secret for an easy way to “roast” chestnuts is to buy peeled packaged chestnuts (the cheap ones are fine) and toss them whole in a hot dry skillet until they are blackened on the edges. Then I let them cool and crumble them coarsely into my cornbread-based stuffing.

I associate turkey with festive times and large gatherings, but when my kids were growing up we would always pick a chilly weekend in early spring to have a turkey dinner for just the few of us. We did it all, hors d’ouevres to dessert, a fire in the fireplace, wind in the trees, and the first daffodils poking their heads out of the wet earth in the rain.

The kids are grown and the family is scattered now, but everyone still loves turkey – cooked the Jacques Pepin way.