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Why You’ll Love My Recipe
Tired of endless dishes when you make a turkey dinner? Try making this deconstructed turkey instead. This is an entire turkey dinner, sides included, using just your roaster.
No more need to fight over when the roast turkey is ready. Don’t forget to serve some Homemade Cranberry Sauce with this turkey. Why not try making some of this tasty Apple Sausage Crock Pot Stuffing or Oven Baked Turkey Stuffing to use in this recipe?
Karlynn’s Recipe Notes
- Skill Level: This recipe is easy to make, but breaking down the turkey does require some precision and knowledge.
- Total Time: Making turkey this way will take you approximately 2 hours and 40 minutes from start to finish.
- Variations: Change the type and amount of stuffing to your own personal preferences. Try using a different assortment of vegetables. Hard, root vegetables will work best but you could also add some mushrooms and celery. Make your own Turkey Seasoning or try something different like Cajun Seasoning.
- Tools Needed: For this recipe, you’ll need kitchen shears, a large roaster, multiple cutting boards, and a sharp knife.
What You’ll Need For Ingredients
Turkey: This recipe has the instructions for a 14-16 pound turkey, so if you use a large or smaller bird you’ll need to adjust your cooking time and possibly the amounts of vegetables and stuffing as well.
Stuffing: Depending on the size of your roaster and how much stuffing your family eats, you’ll need to make a double or even triple batch of your favourite recipe. The same applies to boxed mixes.
Vegetables: Though the recipe card lists red potatoes, you can use any variety of potato you’d like. The same goes for which root vegetables and which type of onion you use. The important part is making sure that the vegetable chunks are all mostly the same size. so they cook evenly.
How To Make Deconstructed Turkey
This is a brief overview of the recipe. The full list of ingredients and step-by-step instructions are in the recipe card below.
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease roaster with butter and set aside.
- Remove the back of the turkey, leaving the breasts and wings attached to each other. Remove each leg (thigh attached), trying not to tear the skin.
- Combine poultry seasoning with melted butter.
- Put chopped veggies in one half of the roaster and stuffing on the other.
- Arrange the turkey pieces over the vegetables and stuffing. Baste/brush the turkey with the seasoned butter.
- Roast for 2-2.5 hours, until breast meat reaches 165°F and thighs are 180°F.
- Remove from oven and let rest for 10 minutes before serving.
Karlynn’s Tips and Tricks for Making Deconstructed Turkey Dinner
Bone Broth: Once you’ve had your fill of delicious turkey, and you’ve picked the bones clean, why not try making some nutritious broth? Bone broth is easy to make and incredibly healthy to drink on it’s own or use for making soups and stews. You can make it a pot or a slow cooker with very little effort, and it’s a great way to reduce food waste.
Meat Placement: How you distribute the pieces of turkey in the roaster will determine whether the vegetables or the stuffing get the bigger dose of fats and juices. If you like your stuffing to be extra loaded with turkey flavour, put the turkey thighs on that area of the roaster. If you put the thighs over the vegetables, your vegetables will get a lovely bath in all that fat. No wrong options here! If you put drier pieces of meat over the vegetables, make sure you mix some of that seasoned butter into the veggies so that they still get plenty of flavour.
Storage Instructions
Store your leftovers just as you would store any other turkey dinner leftovers. Once cooled, put the leftovers into covered containers in the fridge for 3-4 days. You can freeze them the same way for a few months. The turkey will freeze best once it’s been deboned, and you can freeze it all in one container or divide it up into individual portions.
More Delicious Turkey Recipes
Looking for more creative ways to cook turkey?
Try this Thanksgiving Turkey for a classic approach to roast turkey.
If you’ve got leftover turkey to use up, make some Turkey Salad or Leftover Turkey Turnovers.
Use turkey drippings to make an extra tasty Turkey Gravy.
There you go. Take some time back this holiday season and try this deconstructed roast turkey. Make it with or without the sides and let me know what you think.
Happy Cooking!
Karlynn
Deconstructed Turkey and Stuffing with Vegetables in one Roaster
Video
Equipment
- 1 square roaster 18-20 inch
Ingredients
- 14 lb turkey
- 3 batches Homemade Stove Top Stuffing
- 12-14 cups red potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, onions, all large chopped
- ½ cup butter, melted
- 1 tablespoon poultry seasoning
Instructions
- Using kitchen shears, remove the back of the turkey in one strip, leaving the breast and wings attached. If you want drippings for gravy, place these pieces in a pan and roast separately – the tail especially! Remove any large fat pieces and add to this pan as well.
- Remove each thigh carefully,with the leg attached, trying not to tear the turkey skin.
- Pre-heat your oven to 350 °F.
- Combine the poultry seasoning with the melted butter.
- Grease the roaster with butter.
- Place a thick layer of vegetables on one side, followed by a thick layer of stuffing on the other. If you are not placing the turkey thighs on the vegetables, drizzle some of the seasoned butter over the top and mix in to coat them.
- Arrange the turkey on top of the stuffing and vegetables.Baste with the butter mixture thoroughly.
- Roast in the oven ( I do uncovered for that crispy golden skin) for 2- 21/2 hours, until the breast meat reaches 165 °F and the thighs are at least 180 °F. ( the thighs will almost always be ready when the breast is)
- Remove, let rest for 5-10 minutes and serve! You can prepare the drippings from the tail and back pieces into your favourite gravy.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Joe says
No need to keep opening the lid to check – get a 2 probe thermometer and monitor dark and light meat.
Linda says
I was wondering about the stuffing listed in the recipe. The first part says a double batch of your favorite stuffing then the later part has 2-3 batches of the Stovetop Stuffing. I am guessing it was one or the other, is that right?
Christina says
Did Moms stuffing, but cut the vegies too fine in the Cuisinart, had a 16 lb turkey, definitely took longer than 2-21/2 hours. Great idea, however, I won’t be doing this again since the whole gravy thing goes by the wayside and that after all is the purpose of turkey, it’s all about the gravy! I did make turkey stock and roasted the back with onions to get the fond, but alas, not enough. I’ll go back to deconstructed turkey (the way to go) but I’ll pass on the rest of it.
Donald says
Made this on Saturday with a 6.5 kg turkey. I followed the recipe ‘fairly’ closely, and the turkey turned out terrific. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. I need to purchase a pair of kitchen shears and larger roaster (Boxing Day?) but was able to breakdown the uncut turkey quite well using a knife and determination. I used olive oil rather than butter, and used rosemary and thyme with ground pepper and sea salt, rather than poultry seasoning. What didn’t work out was the root vegetables: they didn’t cook in the 2.5 hours of cooking time. Yams, carrots, and parsnips were all still fairly hard. When I do this next time, I think I will cover the bottom of the roaster with dressing alone, and do the veg separate. The dressing (Stove Stop plus celery and onion) was delicious- very moist. A very successful dinner, excepting the root veg.
Karlynn Johnston says
Glad it worked out, I wonder why the veggies didn’t cook? I wonder if lowering your oven rack would help with that problem? They really should cook in 2.5 hours of roasting…hmmmmm.
Marla says
Do you have pics of how to trim the back of the turkey to make gravy? I’m clueless when it comes to properly cutting up poultry and need visuals.
Karlynn Johnston says
I might have a video still shot that I can put up. I did the video (coming soon) by myself, so it was all messy turkey hands all the time LOL!
Marla says
That would be awesome!
Thanks!
Karlynn Johnston says
Trust Martha Stewart to have a great photo! Looks at the slides here :https://www.marthastewart.com/275445/how-to-spatchcock-a-turkey?slide=3421685
Tom Tomlinson says
Super delicious way to prepare a thanksgiving dinner. Thanks Karlynn!
Karlynn Johnston says
I’m glad to hear that it worked out for you so well!!!