Stuffed turkey, Christmas recipe

On these special dates we bring you a Christmas recipe, a Stuffed turkey very typical of these dates. To tell the truth, I had never dared to make this dish since it seems very elaborate and I thought it would not look good, but after this first time I assure you that I will do it more times. It is much simpler than it seems a priori and it is really good. We all loved it!

If you can't find a boneless turkey and you want to make the recipe, go ahead and bone it yourself. Here you can see how to bone a turkey In a simple way.

This stuffed turkey is a very strong dish, so ideally it would be accompanied by a light dish such as a Salmon and shrimp cake or a Shrimp Salad.

Ingredients (8 servings)

• 1 boneless turkey
• 100 gr. of butter
• 1 glass of port wine and cognac (mixed)
• lard
• oregano
• shawl
• pepper
• 1 beautiful onion
• 2 ripe tomatoes
• 2 Bay leaves
• cinnamon

For the filling

• 5 meat sausages
• 4 thick slices of bacon
• 150 gr. ham tacos
• olive oil
• 1 garlic
• 18 prunes soaked in cognac
• 10 dried apricots soaked in cognac
• 50 gr. pine nuts
• 1 piece of truffle, finely chopped
• 1 glass of Port
• shawl
• pepper
• parsley
• cinnamon

For the sauce

• 100 gr. prunes soaked in cognac
• 50 gr. pine nuts

Note

Do not forget soak the raisins and dried apricots in a little brandy.

Preparing the turkey for stuffing

The first thing we have to do is remove all the feathers that remain from the turkey well and we clean very carefully Both inside and out. Try to leave enough neck skin to use later to close the turkey. Season the turkey and dip it with Port. We can use a kitchen brush to help us.  

In a glass we melt a little butter and mix it with cognac and Port wine. With the mixture we fill a syringe (if possible thick) and inject the mixture to the turkey so that the meat becomes tender and it is tastier.

We put the turkey on a tray and store it in the refrigerator for a whole night.

Make the filling

In a frying pan we put a little oil and garlic. When the garlic is fried, add the chopped sausages and bacon and the ham cubes. When it is well fried, we reserve it on a plate.

We clean the pan and put the raisins and dried apricots in it (remember that you have to soak them in cognac in advance) and fry them over high heat. Once they are fried, add the chopped truffle, pine nuts, cinnamon, parsley, salt, pepper, the liquid from the raisins and dried apricots that were soaked and a splash of Port.

Add the meat that we reserved in the previous step to the pan of raisins and dried apricots. We cook it for a couple of minutes, mix it well and put it in a tupperware.

We put it in the fridge and let it rest until the next day.

Stuff the turkey

The next day, we took the turkey out of the fridge and the stuffing that we had reserved.

We put the stuffing in the turkey gut.

We close the turkey by sewing with a special needle and thread for cooking. If you don't have special thread, use a slightly chubby thread and a thick needle to do it.  

We season the turkey on the outside and spread it with lard all over the outside.

Put the turkey in a bowl with an onion, two whole tomatoes (if they are ripe as they give the sauce better flavor), the bay leaf and the cinnamon.

Bake the turkey 

We put the turkey in the oven and cover it with greaseproof paper or albal paper so that it does not burn. The turkey has to be in the oven during 3 hours roughly (depends on how big the turkey is). When the turkey is done on the inside, we remove the baking paper or albal with which we have covered it so that it browns on the outside.

Note

To make the sauce you have to check from time to time that the turkey don't run out of sauce. In that case add water or port wine and cognac as needed. Keep in mind that there has to be a lot of sauce left at the end.

When there is half an hour to finish, add the soaked prunes and the rest of the pine nuts to the sauce to make it turkey sauce.

Present the stuffed turkey

Once it is done we can present whole turkey in a bowl with the sauce around. It is carved directly on the table since this method is more spectacular.

For the sauce we can add the onion and tomato cut into pieces, remove them or crush them. I left half of the vegetables chopped and the other half I crushed them with the mixer, added it to the sauce and mixed it so that it was homogeneous.

I hope you enjoy this one. gorgeous stuffed turkey, a typical Christmas recipe.

Difficulty: Media

More information - How to bone a turkey, Salmon and shrimp cake, Shrimp Salad