How to carve a turkey: Alton Brown's Thanksgiving video tutorial

November 10, 2009 10:40 AM

Filed under Good Eats, TV, cooking, food, holidays, kitchen, recipes, tips, tools, traditions, video

The thought of Thanksgiving coming up and people having to figure out how to carve the bird reminds me of two extremely helpful things:

Our Cuisinart CEK-40 Electric Knife. We’ve had it for about a decade, and its two blades work like magic on both roasted meats and breads.
The baseline cutting trick, as demonstrated by Alton Brown in the video above from his Food Network show Good Eats. This genius carving tip makes a huge difference.

Here at the Czerniec house, we roast turkeys many times each year, and we have learned that a traditional carving knife is no match for the ease and power of a good electric knife.

We have not tested other brands. We chose our Cuisinart electric knife based on the quality of their food processors. We also liked the idea of the second blade for use as an electric bread knife — an enormous help whenever you need to slice up three or four baguettes all at once for bruschetta or stuffing or croutons. We have used this knife for a good nine or ten years with excellent results.

The blades are said to be dishwasher safe, but we prefer to wash them by hand. They can be taken apart for cleaning, then easily put back together.

Alton Brown is one of our all-time culinary heroes. This turkey-carving tutorial above is taken from his 1999 Good Eats Season 1 hour-long special, “Romancing the Bird: A Good Eats Thanksgiving.”

Turkey brining

That same episode also introduced many Americans to the moist and juicy benefits of brining a turkey:

If you want to go beyond just carving and brine and the Good Eats Roast Turkey recipe, into such related topics as …

The history of the Thanksgiving dinner
Anthropological correctness
Turkey refrigeration temperatures
The Polder digital probe timer/thermometer
Safe thawing
Why stuffing is evil
Tart Cranberry Dipping Sauce, and
Sweet Corn Bread Pudding

… then you might as well watch the whole show:

I have grouped the four YouTube segments into one streaming YouTube playlist, Romancing the Bird: A Good Eats Thanksgiving, which should run in sequence above.

A complete transcript of “Romancing the Bird” is also available online, via the wonderful Good Eats Fan Page, and the special is included on the Good Eats with Alton Brown: Holiday Treats DVD.