Main Courses
The benefit of the turducken is that the filling is already cooked, what we want it to cook the pastry through and to warm the middle through.
Start by placing a baking tray in the oven and set to 190oc. If you have space, pop the turducken in the freezer for half an hour, if not, just keep it in the back of the fridge until ready to cook. Once the ray has pre—heated, slide the turducken onto the tray and cook for around 40-50 minutes, or until the pastry is nice and golden brown all over. There are a few tension points cut into the pastry but sometimes the pastry does tend to tear a little bit during cooking, which is nothing to worry about.
After cooking, remove from the oven and slide onto a wooden board or large tray, allow to rest for around 15 minutes. If you happen to have any or many leftovers of this, when its gone cold, if you remove the pastry ansd slice thin, it makes a very good sandwich filling with cranberry sauce and all the other usual festive gubbins.
Turducken en croûte
Dauphinoise Pithivier
The potato pie requires a little bit of planning. Not planning as if you are to scale some sort of gastronomic everest or anything, more that we need to plan in the time it will take to cook it. The filling contains cooked and compressed layers of potato, so it takes a bit of time to get the heat into the centre.
Start by placing a baking tray in the oven and set to 210oc. If you have space, pop it in the freezer for half an hour, if not, just keep it in the back of the fridge until ready to cook. Once the tray has preheated, slide the pie onto the tray and cook for 6 minutes, then drop the temperature to 180oc and cook for a further 45-60 minutes. A good way to check is to slide a metal skewer of some sort into the middle and gently tap it on your top lip, if it’s hot, it’s ready, if it’s “quite warm” give it a little longer.
Allot it to rest for 10 minutes before cutting into it, any leftovers can be reheated loosly wrapped in foil in the oven or an air fryer.
If you have any fear around a welly, don’t. There seems to be a bit of an objective and collective fear when it comes to cooking a weely but honestly, don’t. All the graft has already been done for you, the beef has been sealed, the duxelle has been made and the pastry has been rolled. In an effort to make it even easier, i’ve included a thermometer. If you ever hear a chef claiming they cook a wellington by aye or just experience, they’re a lying prick. The probe is your crutch and allows you to relax.
You want to have the wellington as cold as you can in my opinion, my wellingtons are pretty simple, to a degree. In that there arent any pancakes, no spinach no ham, no paté and no fluff. There is beef, mustard, duxelle and caul fat (natures clingfilm). What this means is that there are less layers to penetrate through to the beef, so we need to ensure we can give the pastry as long as we can to cook, before the temperature of the beef increases to much.
Place a baking tray in the oven at 230oc, or as hot as your oven will go, for around 30 minutes. During this time, place your welly into the freezer. If you don’t have the space, at the back of the fridge will suffice, although i would say that you can take out the frozen pizzas peas for a bit, they won’t mind taking one for the team for a bit when they see a welly sitting in their seat for a bit.
When ready to cook, slide the welly onto the tray and set a timer for 7 minutes. After this time, drop the temperature to 185oc without opening the door. After 20 minutes of cooking, stick your probe into the middle of the beef, try to have the end in the centre of the beef. You are aiming for a final temperature of 45-46oc, although at this point it’ll likely be sat around the early 30s (somewhere I wish I could stay indefinitely). At this point, it won’t be ready but this’ll give us a good indicator of how long the next few increments should be. if it is reading 25-30oc, check the temperature again after 15 minutes, if it reads 30-38oc, check again after 10 minutes & if its reads between 38-42oc, which will be unlikely, check it again after 5 minutes.
Once you have reached the 45-46oc degree window, it’s time to rest. Ideally you will have a wire rack of some description, so that air can circulate around whilst resting. Remove it from the oven and on to a chopping board, using a sharp or serrated knife, carve the ends of the welly off, about 2-3cm in, not enough to carve into the beef but just enough to expose the ends, thid will allow steam to escape during resting and avoid a WAW (wet ass welly).
Allow to rest for 20 minutes before carving. Using a serrated or sharp knife, carve the welly in half, then depending on how many you are feeding, each half into two, three or four. Season the flesh side with a pinch of salt and plate up.
Beef Wellington
Cooking this pie is dead simple, simply preheat your oven to 170oc and when hot, place into the middle of the oven. This one is cooked at a slightly lower temperature so that the pastry can get a long, slow cook to ensure that it gets as crisp as possible, without risking a blow out of the filling and the render out the bone marrow. It wants to be cooked for around 1 hour and fifteen minutes. Once you see some of the gravy starting bubbling through the gap, increase the temperature all the way up to maximum. At this point, keep an eye on it, it should take on a nice dark mahogany colour.
Once cooked, remove from the oven and allow to rest for 15 minutes, this is so that the temperature of the gravy cools slightly and thickens back up. The tin it comes in is slightly non stick and is greased so it should be able to be slid out easily but to be honest it really doesn’t have an effect on the eating or the pleasure of it, so my advice would be to place it in the middle of the table and have at it.
Venison Tin Pie
Dead simple. I personally hate pissing around two much with the sides on christmas day. So i’ve tried to make these as easy as possible, all cooked at the same temperature at the same time, taking them out at short increments one by one. Set your oven to 200oc and pop them all in on their own trays at the same time, the timings for each are below. Doddle.
