The ideal Thanksgiving spread features a gorgeous, bronzed turkey, perched on a platter and brimming with stuffing. But some ideals aren’t practical: a crispy-skinned, evenly browned, and perfectly cooked whole turkey is hard to find outside of a Norman Rockwell paintings and magazine photo shoots. If you’ve ever found yourself blasting your turkey with a hair dryer to try to get perfectly crispy skin, you know what I’m talking about.
I have cooked a lot of turkeys over the years, and here’s my POV: if you want a gorgeously browned turkey with beautiful crispy skin that tastes as good as it looks, spatchcocking is the only way to go.
What Is Spatchcocking?
When you spatchcock a turkey (or any bird), you’re removing the center backbone, opening the body up like a book, and then flipping the entire turkey and flattening it so it lies in one piece, breast side up. (If you need more instructions, check out Brooke’s Perfect Bite Roast Chicken recipe.) This allows the turkey to roast flat on a sheet pan instead of perching inside a roasting tin. This method might ruin the whole Norman Rockwell visual, but it will also give you the best turkey you ever tasted. Here are five reasons you should spatchcock your Thanksgiving turkey.
A Spatchcocked Turkey Cooks Faster
A whole, un-spatchcocked turkey takes about 13 minutes per pound to cook. That's as long as 3 ¼ hours for a 15-pound turkey. And if you decide to double down on the classic Thanksgiving ideal and stuff it? That cook time is even longer. A spatchcocked turkey, on the other hand, only takes six minutes per pound to cook which, if you do the math, cuts the oven time in half.
It Cooks More Evenly
Dry breast meat be gone! Not only will a spatchcocked turkey cook more quickly, it will also cook more evenly.
A turkey that’s roasted in the "traditional" way cooks with the breast on top, taking the brunt of the heat and insulating the legs from cooking as quickly. This often results in the breast becoming overcooked and dry before those legs (which actually need to reach a higher temperature!) cook through. With a spatchcocked turkey, however, all the various turkey parts are roasted on the same level, with the thighs and drumsticks positioned near the edge of the pan where they will receive the heat first. The result? The entire turkey (both breast and legs) reaches the ideal point of doneness at the same time, yielding juicy dark meat and tender, still moist, white meat.
You’ll Get Gorgeous Crispy Skin All Over
Think about it: when you roast a turkey in a roasting pan, the sides of the pan block the blast of oven heat and effectively steam the lower sides of the turkey, making it very difficult to get even browning and that gorgeous crispy skin everywhere. With a spatchcocked turkey, every part of the turkey is fully exposed to the oven heat, resulting in beautiful bronzed crispy skin everywhere.
You’ll Save Oven Space
Oven space is always at a premium on Thanksgiving. In addition to taking less time to cook (see above!), a spatchcocked turkey also takes up less vertical space in the oven. This means you can easily use your second oven rack to bake stuffing or other sides while the turkey cooks. And you don’t have to do any crazy rejiggering of oven rack positions to make it work, either.
Have Easier Access to Pan Drippings
If you’re not making gravy ahead of time (which you absolutely can do!), roasting the turkey spatchcocked on a flat baking rack over a sheet pan makes collecting those drippings much easier and more efficient. Simply lift the entire rack (including the turkey) off the pan and transfer it to rest over another sheet pan. Then you can easily pour off the drippings from the first sheet pan and deglaze the pan. Forget trying to ladle the drippings out of the deeper roasting tin (and trying to figure out where to put the roasting rack holding the turkey while you do it!).
Once you spatchcock your Thanksgiving turkey, you’ll never go back to the roasting pan again. Sure you might think you’ll miss that iconic presentation, but think about it: how long does that turkey actually stay whole? In my house, it’s already carved up when it goes to the table. And once you cut it up, you’ll never know it wasn’t roasted in the traditional way. Oh...except for the fact that it will be perfectly cooked, perfectly browned, and have perfectly crispy skin all over.
