My turkey usually turns out pretty good, but this past Thanksgiving I had a hard time getting the white and dark to finish together. Ended up having to put the dark back into the oven for 20 minutes to get it done.

So for Christmas I decided to cook the white and dark separately, using techniques from Jacob Burton.  I broke down a 14lb bird, boned the leg and thigh and made a roulade and the breast was pan roasted.  Everything turned out perfect. It's a bit of work up front, but you can prepare everything days in advance, including the stock and gravy. On the day-of, all you need to do is pan sear the roulade and roast the breast which only takes about 25 minutes.

Looks good, great presentation.

I don't go to the trouble of boning, but I do like to part and cook the pieces when I do turkey anymore!  You did a nice job on trussing the bird.

Thanks. Forgot to mention that I used transglutaminase to keep the roulade together.

Thanks. Forgot to mention that I used transglutaminase to keep the roulade together.

I was wondering about that. So you just rolled the dark meat, nothing inside from the looks of it? They look great.

Nice job!!!

I was thinking Meat Goo!

That really is a great presentation.

I went and checked out Jacob Burton's YT and found that I had watched the leg deboning and roulade videos. Now I want to go buy a turkey.

 Nice job.  If looks reflect taste, it's a humdinger.

You can halve fowl so that the white and dark meats are isolated from each other.  In that way you can remove one and leave the other to roast longer.

See this post.

Looks great and very nice presentation

> So you just rolled the dark meat, nothing inside from the looks of it?

The inside is seasoned with salt, pepper, sugar, garlic powder and just a touch of dried thyme. Also, the tender from the breast is rolled in there too, after removing the big tendon.

I was originally just going to separate the white and dark but ran across this technique which appealed to me for several reasons.

* I love leg meat but hate gnawing on all of those tendons and feather bones.
* On the day-of you can go from fridge to table in about an hour
* The meat gets seasoned all over - inside and out

It probably took me 2.5 hours to break down the bird, bone the leg/thigh, roll up the roulades and prepped the breasts. A lot of that was because I kept referring back to the videos to make sure I was doing it correctly. I'm sure an experience chef could get it done it about 30 minutes.

I don't know if I mentioned it but the roulades get sous vide at 145f for 6 hours, then seared - or deep fried if you're up for it.

Looks great.