COULD YOU COOK A TURKEY BY DROPPING IT FROM SPACE?

OVEN DECIDED TO BREAK ON CHRISTMAS EVE? DESPERATE TIMES CALL FOR DESPERATE MEASURES

- DR STUART FARRIMOND

Some 10 million turkeys are eaten every Christmas in the UK alone, yet it is a meat that many of us love to hate. After all, the line between tender succulence and a mouthful of dried sawdust can be wafer thin. Oven roasting, spatchcocking, spit roasting, deep fat frying... each cooking method has its pros and cons. But part of the issue with cooking the perfect turkey is down to the birds themselves.

Since the 1930s, turkeys have ballooned more than doubling in weight as farmers have bred only the biggest, leanest birds. And because they can be so large and low in fat, the outer meat can be overdone and leathery by the time the middle is cooked. As soon as meat reaches around 65°C, it starts to cook: the proteins unravel and coagulate, or 'denature', making the flesh firm and digestible.

Supermarket turkeys are considered safe to eat when the deepest part of the meat has reached 70°C. At higher temperatures, the meat gets stiffer and drier. Oven roasting is particularly dehydrating because the cooking chamber is so arid and because heat moves so desperately slowly from air into solids. Try hovering your hand in an oven at 150°C (which is the air temperature) and it will feel hot but not unbearable; yet a mere splash of 100°C water or oil would make your skin blister and burn.