Sitting down to a delicious Christmas dinner is one of the festive traditions we most look forward to! This year we've made it easy to design your menu with our tasty recipes for traditional roast turkey and a delicious vegan Wellington, fresh ideas for your side dishes and four pages of showstopping puds to choose from…
Perfect roasted Golden Turkey
PREPARATION TIME 20 minutes
COOKING TIME 2.5 hours, plus resting time
SERVES 10-12
INGREDIENTS
● 5kg Golden Turkey ● 2 tbsp rapeseed oil ● Sea salt and black pepper ● 2 clementines, halved ● A few sprigs fresh rosemary ● 3 onions, peeled and roughly chopped ● 2 sticks celery, roughly chopped ● 2 carrots, roughly chopped
METHOD
Take your turkey out of the fridge 2 hours before you're ready to cook it, so it comes up to room temperature before roasting.
Preheat your oven to 18(fC/Fan 160°C/ Gas Mark 4.
Place the turkey on a plate, breast side down, and drizzle the meat with the rapeseed oil then season with sea salt and black pepper. Place the clementine halves, one of the onions and the rosemary sprigs into the turkey cavity.
4 Scatter the roughly chopped vegetables in the bottom of a large roasting pan and lay your prepared turkey on top. Pour over 400ml cold water, then put it in the hot oven. Cook for about 30 minutes per kg. The 5kg turkey in this recipe will take about 2 to 2.5 hours to cook. Halfway through cooking, take the turkey out of the oven and turn it over so it's breast side up and season this side. The best way to tell if the turkey is cooked is to use a meat thermometer in the thigh. It's cooked when it has reached 65°C. If you don't have a meat thermometer then pierce the thickest part of the thigh with a skewerand make sure the iuices run clear.
5 Rest the turkey for at least 1 hour, preferably 2 hours for bigger birds, before carving.
COOK'S TIP Save the turkey roasting juices to make gravy (see our recipe on page 115) and keep the vegetables used in the pan with the turkey to make soup or a tasty, rich stock (perfect for leftover turkey risotto) the following day.
