PHOTOS: How To Carve A Turkey, Step-By-Step
**How to carve a turkey? Scroll down for step-by-step photos and instructions.**
This Thanksgiving, Americans will cook and consume over 40 million turkeys, yet very few of them will be carved in a stress- and mess-free manner, that doesn't also waste waste your carefully prepared bird. So we asked Jeffrey Elliot, Chef and Director of Culinary Relations of Zwilling J.A. Henckels, and co-author of The Complete Book of Knife Skills: The Essential Guide to Use Techniques and Care, to show us, step-by-step, the best way to carve a Thanksgiving turkey.
How To Carve A Turkey
Jeffrey Elliot
One of my earliest memories of Thanksgiving is of my father being rushed to the emergency room, after reaching for and catching a falling carving knife at the table, resulting in several stitches. This incident is now referred to among family members as "The year of the red gravy."
Two valuable lessons were learned this year, first and foremost of which is never try to catch a falling knife. The second lesson was that Norman Rockwell was wrong. While it might seem like a great idea to carve the Thanksgiving Turkey at the dining room table, for many reasons, it's not.
- It's nerve-wracking, a live performance in front of oft-times jeering family and friends
- It's messy, the juices may stain your tablecloth
- It's the wrong way to slice meat. Cutting on the bone forces you to cut with the grain of the meat rather that against it.
- It's wasteful; you'll end up with a lot of meat left on the bone.
You can keep the Norman Rockwell moment by bringing out your beautifully bronzed bird and presenting to your assembled guests, before whisking it back to the kitchen to disassemble it by following the steps on the following slides. You'll need a Chef's knife or carving knife, as well as a carving fork and boning knife to perform the task.
Jeffrey Elliot is The Executive Chef and Director of Culinary Relations of ZWILLING J.A. HENCKELS and along with James P. DeWan is the author of the Zwilling J.A. Henckels Complete Book of Knife Skills: The Essential Guide to Use Techniques and Care.
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First Posted: 11/16/10 02:08 PM ET Updated: 11/24/11 03:07 PM ET