Cooking Tips & Recipes

A Six Brothers turkey has a layer of fat that runs under the skin - they get it mainly from good living but also because they grow more slowly than commercial strains of turkey and put on fat easily when they are fully grown. It means that they are much harder to dry out than a supermarket bird and the meat really is juicy.

We do not stuff the body cavity of our christmas turkey - not because of food safety - but because we find it really slows down the cooking process. You don't want to do that - cook a turkey fast. The days of getting up before the children are awake in the dark on Christmas morning, to start cooking the turkey are gone.

This is what Nigella Lawson says in her brilliant book Feast:

People have been over cooking turkeys for generations, which explains why the dryness of the meat is so embedded in folk memory. 

She recommends cooking a 12lb turkey for only two and a half hours at 180 degrees celcius.

We do stuff the neck of the bird with sausage meat stuffing but include chopped onion, a handful of breadcrumbs and maybe a chopped apple so it doesn't get too dense.  Garlic is essential.