How-To Guides

How to cook a whole turkey

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What is a whole bronze turkey?

Our free-range bronze turkey is a smaller, slower-growing breed (typically up to 22 weeks), allowing for a higher natural fat content to develop between the muscle fibres. This important detail produces a firmer texture and bastes the meat as it cooks, making it reliably juicy, dense, and complex in flavour. A bronze turkey bears little resemblance to a commercial bird in terms of both flavour and texture.

A Christmas feast is never complete without a whole roast turkey. Turkey has all the nutritional benefits of chicken, with a distinct, robust flavour on account of the 140+ days age of the bird and the entirely free-range lifestyle.

This traditional festive centrepiece gives guests a delightful choice between moist turkey breast, crisp wings, and tender brown meat.

Whole turkey cooking time

Roasting a free-range bronze turkey will take less time than a supermarket bird. As a guide, roast for 25-30 minutes per kg, preferably measuring the internal temperature of the thickest part of the leg to 65ºC using a meat thermometer.

Importantly, remember your turkey will continue to cook once out of the oven, a margin of 8-10ºC should be accounted for, so remove it from the oven when the thermometer reads 55-57ºC. We would always advocate a resting time similar to the time the bird has been in the oven — this essential detail allows all the juices to flow back into the meat.

How to cook your whole turkey

  1. Remove your turkey from the packaging, pat dry, and bring to room temperature.
  2. Preheat oven to 180ºC/Fan 160ºC/Gas 4.
  3. Smear softened butter all over the turkey and season with salt and pepper.
  4. Scatter a bunch of bruised thyme on the seasoned breast, and another in the cavity with a halved, unpeeled onion.
  5. Cover the breast entirely with overlapping slices of smoked, streaky bacon.
  6. Cover the turkey loosely with foil and place it breast-side up in a roasting tin.
  7. Cook for 25 – 30 minutes per kg (see the section above for a temperature guide). Aim to baste the bird 5-6 times during cooking, spooning the resulting fat and juices over the bird’s breast, legs, and wings.
  8. Remove the foil and streaky bacon for the remaining 40 minutes to achieve a golden brown breast.
  9. Remove the turkey from the oven and allow it to rest in a warm place. A resting time mirroring the bird’s roasting time is advised.
  10. Don’t carve the bird too soon or you will lose essential juices, resulting in dry meat.

Whole turkey recipe

Bread sauce is a classic British sauce, traditionally served alongside roast Christmas turkey. For a gamut of textures and flavours, try Val Warner’s Roasted Christmas apples with sausage and jelly to accompany your festive feast.

Jorge hails from the Black Mountains where he grew up surrounded by hardy, native livestock. His passion for cookery was sparked by his upbringing, but developed and intensified alongside his respect for British breeds, and zeal for nose-to-tail eating. In 2009 trained chef Jorge launched Swaledale in Haworth, and took his native-breed led whole-carcass butchery philosophy to high profile restaurateurs. Jorge is a passionate procurer and hanger of meat, and is keen to showcase the sublime taste and texture that comes from ageing, higher fat content, and an older carcass. Jorge proudly invests in native-breeds, as maintaining their market demand is crucial to their very survival. Jorge studied Creative Writing at Leeds University, and is a former Welsh athletics champion. He lives with his wife, ceramicist Amy Thomas and their 2 children, Fynn and Bea, on a remote grouse moor in West Yorkshire.