Popeyes Precooked Turkey Fully Fucked (and You Can Do It Even Better)
Until recently, it never occurred to me that some people buy pre-cooked turkey to serve on Thanksgiving. Not only am I too much of a control freak to trust the welfare of The Bird to anyone else, the very concept seems flawed right after that. The turkey is already incredibly prone to drying out, and the process of heating cooked meat displaces even more moisture.
But one day I drove past my local papayas (the best papayas in Portland) and saw them advertising Cajun turkey poults with “savory Louisiana-style spices.” As a lover of everything about Popeyes, I was immediately intrigued. I called the restaurant and asked how to order it, and they told me, “Just go in and ask for a turkey.” (According to Thrillist, you can also pre-order the bird, so call the local Popeyes and ask them what’s true? )
I got my turkey as a pass and took the frozen, precooked poultry home in exchange for $ 49.99. After letting it thaw in the fridge for four days (time prescribed by my local Popeyes manager), I was ready to eat some savory turkey.
It’s not as easy as “heat and serve”.
Two reviews of this turkey describe Popeyes Cajun Turkey as “roasted in a flute,” but the skin tells a different story. Update: Last night, an anonymous insider emailed me to let me know that the turkeys “used to be fried after cooking, but now they are not.” “They are cooked in an inner bag,” they explained, “so the skin will not be crispy without help.”
“I don’t think they’ve been fried for about 8 years,” they continued. “Before that, they could have been produced by someone else for several years. When we roasted them, you didn’t get as much juice as you generally did. The poultry was chilled after the main cooking process, then “peeled” of the cooking bag and juice and broiled for a few minutes until it turns brown and crispy. We stopped frying them after we lost our contract for several years and our frying process was a poor setting for efficiency. “
It all adds up because this unroasted bird comes with a lot of droplets, which isn’t aesthetically pleasing but ultimately works. Straight out of the package, the cold bird was beige and gray, with cajun sprinkles on the skin and many frozen drops both inside and outside the body cavity. Personally, I thought that cooking this turkey for the oven was a little more difficult than making a raw poultry carcass, but I am used to chopping all kinds of poultry, so you might feel the same way. (It reminded me of Aqua Teen turkeys that “come out of a sauce-drenched womb,” but not all have their brains poisoned by Adult Swim.) The instructions on the package are simple:
Preheat a regular oven to 350 ℉. Remove all packaging, leaving juices. Place the turkey on a wire rack in a large roasting pan and pour the juice into it. Cover with aluminum foil, forming a snug fit around the edges of the pan. Preheat in the oven on the lower rack for 1.5 hours. Remove the foil and cook for 30 minutes without the lid AND [sic], until the core temperature reaches 150 ℉, as measured with a meat thermometer inserted into the deepest part of the breast (without touching the bones). Let stand 20 minutes before slicing.
I don’t have a traditional skillet because I usually spit on my poultry , and because the high sides of the skillet protect the thighs and legs, which is counterproductive – you want dark meat to cook faster than white meats as it takes a higher temperature to destroy their connective the cloth. However, I had an aluminum pan, so I put the bird in it along with its frozen juice, of which there was a lot. I sealed the whole thing in foil and cooked it for 90 minutes according to the instructions, then transferred it to a wire rack inside a rimmed baking sheet to make the skin crispy. It took an extra hour for the breasts to heat up to 150 ℉, but bringing it up to that temperature turned out to be a mistake anyway (more on that in a moment).
It was not the most aesthetic turkey I have ever cooked. The skin was torn in several places, several bones protruded in the middle of the chest, and the meat protruding from the legs was dry and gray. Despite all this, it was still pretty good .
The taste is incredible (if you like Popeyes)
As I mentioned earlier, 150 ℉ is too hot for an already cooked turkey. While the wings and thigh meat were some of the best I have ever eaten (a whole leg fell off the bird’s body when I took it out of the oven), parts of the drumsticks were almost dry and the breast was quite completely dry, although still wetter than half the breast I was served in my 35s when I ate Thanksgiving dinners.
The whole bird was infused with Popeyes, which is one of my favorite flavors: salty, slightly spicy and very piquant (thanks to the presence of onion and garlic powder). I was surprised to find that MSG was not listed on the ingredient list. The cajun seasoning on the skin was quite bright and slightly pungent, although I read that it might appear “hot” for a lighter palate. (I am very pale, do not handle the heat well, and I was not overwhelmed.) It was not the worst turkey I have ever eaten, but it could be even better with a little touch-up.
How to cook Popeyes turkey
Instead of heating the whole poultry at 350 until it reaches an internal temperature of 150 ℉, lower the oven temperature to 300 ℉ and the target temperature to 135 ℉ -140. If I did this all the way, I would heat the foil-covered turkey in a 300-degree oven for an hour and a half until it reaches an internal temperature of 135 ℉, then open the lid and fry until the skin becomes crispy. The meat will be warm enough, especially after you sprinkle it with the sauce made with dripping from the pan, a step I can’t recommend. (More on this gravy later.)
The breast meat will probably not be as tender or juicy as the buttermilk breast you cooked yourself or anything else , but it will likely be more moist than the turkey at the Thanksgiving dinners you ate on childhood.
About that sauce
One great thing about this pre-cooked and prepackaged poultry is that you get over four cups of Popeye-flavored drops, and those drops make an incredible sauce. But as with the turkey cooking instructions, some adjustments need to be made to the sauce instructions.
The sauce, prepared as it is written on the shrink-wrap packaging, has a very noticeable flour flavor. This is because the instructions tell you to make a “paste” from the drips and flour, but they don’t force you to prepare a potential dressing before adding the leftover liquid.
Fortunately, this is very easy to fix. Instead of making a drip sauce, I used butter and cooked the butter and flour mixture for a few minutes to get rid of the raw flour flavor. I also reduced the amount of water from 1 cup to half a cup and increased the number of drops from 1 cup to 1 1/2 cups. The taste is much better with these settings. (I love this gravy so much, I plan on saving the leftover drops and making it for my real Thanksgiving meal.)
Improved Popeyes Turkey Sauce
Ingredients:
- Butter 3 tbsp.
- 3 tablespoons flour
- 1/8 teaspoon white pepper
- 1 1/2 cups reserved drops from skillet
- 1/2 glass of water
Melt the butter over low heat in a 2 quart saucepan, then add the flour and pepper, stirring and scraping with a wooden spoon or silicone spatula to form a paste. Raise the heat to medium-high and cook for a couple of minutes, until it smells like butter rather than raw flour. Slowly add the liquid ingredients while whisking and continue whisking until the mixture boils. Let it simmer for 5 minutes until thickened. Serve immediately with turkey and mashed potatoes.
So is it worth buying pre-cooked turkey from Popeyes?
It all depends on the circumstances. If you’re a seasoned turkey chef who cooks juicy and flavorful birds year after year, you can probably skip this one. This particular $ 50 turkey is about the same as a traditional poultry and is heated almost as much as a jacket turkey to cook. (Although you do save a lot of time in the seasoning department.)
But if you’re worried about The Bird getting undercooked, don’t want to deal with dry or wet brine, or just love the taste of Popeyes, you could do a lot worse. Even with the modified instructions above, the breast meat may turn out to be slightly drier than lovingly cooked turkey in a stew, souvid, or smoked turkey, but the thigh meat will be flawless and overall better than most meat. you ate turkey as a child. Alternatively, you can always wet any dry portions with the gravy. This gravy is incredible.
Updated November 10, 2021 at 1:45 PM ET to add information on how turkeys are processed. We haven’t updated the title, which is fine.