Trussing is that final step in turkey prep when you wrap the turkey neatly in twine and tie the legs together. Your grandma trussed. Your mom trussed. You probably truss, too. But in a recent Fine Cooking article, food science gurus David Joachim and Andrew Schlosss explain that trussing...well, it's just not that worth it.
Joachim and Schloss say that trussing prevents hot air from circulating around the legs. This causes the turkey to cook unevenly, and the breast meat tends to overcook while the legs are still roasting away.
Trussing is really just for appearances sake, they say. If you're already planning on carving the turkey in the kitchen and carrying the platter to the table, just skip it altogether. Even if you're planning to carve the turkey à table, it's still worth the sacrifice of traditional appearance for a more evenly roasted turkey.
Do you truss? Or have you discovered this anti-trussing secret for yourself?
• Read the Article: The Science of Roasting a Perfect Turkey by David Joachim and Andrew Schloss from Fine Cooking, Oct/Nov 2011
Related: Glazed and Braised: 9 Non-Traditional Recipes for Turkey
(Image: Flickr member advencap licensed under Creative Commons)
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I don't truss---only because the first time I cooked a turkey I didn't have the supplies to truss it anyway. I also accidentally baked it upside down in the roasting pan. It looked like a train wreck, but it was juicy and delicious.
So I figured don't mess up a good thing. Forty yeas later, I still don't truss and I still cook a turkey upside down.
SunnyBlue, you brought back great memories! When I was in grad school we had a big Thanksgiving potluck and the students who baked the turkey breast didn't know any better and baked it upside down. It was still very tasty!
I've never trussed a chicken or turkey. The ones I have had that have been trussed has soft skin on the inside part of the leg, and I don't like that. While a trussed bird looks nice, a regular looks just fine too.
My mom, who has cooked probably 40 Thanksgiving turkeys, never trussed and they always turned out great. As for cooking the turkey upside down, my sister took over turkey duty a couple years ago and she starts the turkey upside down and then flips it over part way through cooking. Flipping it is tricky, but the breast gets a chance to soak up more juices at the beginning of cooking, but then still has a chance to brown nicely after you flip it.
nope, I have never trussed.
Great tip, and good to know! This is the first Thanksgiving my family's decided to let me (the 24-year-old) cook the turkey. Can't wait to see the look on my parents' faces when I give them scientific evidence that non-trussed is better than trussed. Hee hee!
I never truss. Everything negative said about trussing is true.
Now, about roasting the bird "upside down" ... I have seen it advised in several places that this is actually the "correct" way to do it to keep the turkey moist. I have done it both ways, and I have to say roasting breast down does give a quality better result, but it looks horrible. Also, butterflying the thing works great for even roasting, but that's another topic.
Cook on!
Truss it?! I barely know it!
I always truss my chickens - I do see a difference in a moist breast (salt and pepper, trussed at 450 for an hour - perfection)- we've started frying our turkey and after I was convinced last year I could roast a better turkey than my husband could fry, his clearly won out, so we're only frying this year. No need to Truss.
Upside down is the only way to go! Dark meat perfectly cooked, white meat tender and succulent. Who cares what it looks like? (We're all terrible carvers in my family anyway!)
We did ours on a rotisserie the first time we hosted Thanksgiving, I don't remember what we did last year (except that the rotisserie wouldn't work and we had to do a 2.5 hour blast roast I found on food.com), and this year we roasted it upside down. My husband asked me to do it right-side up next year, but I told him the bird was better this way, even if he didn't get the crispy skin on the breast and drumsticks.