My work gave out turkeys. I made roulades budgetfood

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Basically, all I paid for was bacon and seasoning. Grand total of ~$6, and will feed several people, likely with leftovers.

Bit of a pain in the ass to cook turkey no matter how you do it. I didn't have a recipe layed out for me, just glanced at a few I found online, got the gist, and went into it blind. But here's a (sort of) step by step.

Get:

A whole turkey (mine was 13 lbs, more than enough for 2 roulades.)

Bacon

Choice of seasonings (I used whole bay leaves, sage, rosemary, cumin, onion powder, black pepper, salt, paprika, and cardamom.)

1. Thaw the turkey. There are good calculators online for this. Mine would've taken 3 1/2 days in refrigerator to thaw, but the turkeys were given out yesterday, and Thanksgiving is tomorrow. I have WAY too much on my plate tomorrow, (pun intended) so I got it done today by cold water thawing for about 4 hours after 24 hours of refrigerator thawing.

2. Take off the legs and wings. It'll make it easier to skin the bird. Basically pull on them suckers till they're mostly detached, then finish cutting flesh, ligament and cartilage with a sharp knife.

3. Carefully remove the skin, one half at a time. Breast side or the polar first, doesn't mater. You may make a couple incisions, one per side. I didn't. Basically just get a hold of an end pull while cutting the membrane holding it on.

4. Cut the meat up. If you've never carved a turkey, there's instructions online. But here, we're just carving the bird and making small-to-medium sized chunks of meat, separating white from dark. Or not. I'm not your mom. You can get more dark meat from the legs or wings, but it's a pain and a half cutting out ligament. You've been warned.

If you haven't started drinking yet, start. You're done cutting anyway. Your family is coming over tomorrow, and you have memories to suppress. There's a reason tonight is the busiest bar night of the year.

1. Lay out strips of bacon slightly overlapping lengthwise on tin foil, alternatively, you could weave 'em, like a delicious, meaty basket. Either way, lay them nice and flat. You'll want to repeat this process if you're making more than one. Ditto the next steps leading up to throwing it in the oven.

2. Take a half of skin and lay it flat on top of the bacon.

3. Season. Don't be shy, either. Really lay ot on there. Don't go crazy with the cardamom or sage, though. It's potent. Maybe a couple pinches each.

4. Grab one side of the tin foil and roll everything on that side toward the center. Before it all falls back, grab the other side, roll it over, and get it rolled up tightly as possible. I ended up using another sheet of tin foil to hold it together better.

5. Bake. Preheat the oven to whatever. I did it at 375. Emeril does his at 400, but I takes it slow. I left it in for 2 hours, cut a slit in it, and put it back in for another hour. And bam. Done. Cool for 15 (again, I'm not your mom, but I'm not liable for you burning your stupid mouth) slice in 1 1/2 in slices, or however thick you want it, and serve.

Submitted November 26, 2015 at 07:30AM by taggadem810 http://ift.tt/1YvaDYM budgetfood