Food & Drink: The Times They Are A-Changin'

If you're up at four in the morning to get your turkey in the oven, chances are you'll cremate it. Michael Bateman hears from the turkey- plucker's son who says that when it comes to flavour and succulence, much less time is more

TEN MILLION festive Britons can't be wrong, can they? That's how many will be slamming turkeys into ovens across the country some time on Friday. According to the accepted rule of thumb, most of these turkeys will go into a hot oven for 20 minutes per pound, plus 20 minutes, if they weigh up to 10lb. And above that weight, 15 minutes per pound, plus 15 minutes.

Most of them, when they reach the table, will be dry and unpalatable, claims turkey farmer Paul Kelly. "Not just overcooked," he says. "Cremated. No wonder people complain that they don't like it, that it's too dry. Turkey is deliciously moist it you don't overcook it."

With only five days to go to the main event, this is truly provocative stuff. What Paul Kelly is saying is that the accepted figures are seriously wrong. Turkey cooks through in half those times; so a 10lb turkey needs only 10 minutes per pound, plus 10 minutes.

If Paul Kelly's findings are accepted, there will need to be some huge revisions made within the turkey industry before next Christmas. For the figures by which we all desiccate our festive lunches are put out by the British Turkey Information Service, which informs hundreds of the nation's cookery writers and editors. And the BTIS's figures for fresh and frozen birds - including cooking times for every weight of turkey, from five to 30lb - are accepted without question.

This year, these cooking times have appeared in nearly every journal in the country, including the top-selling food publication BBC Good Food Magazine, as well as Sainsbury's Magazine, and the periodicals of Waitrose, Marks & Spencer and Tesco.

Paul Kelly is one of the leading figures in the turkey industry who, along with his father Derek Kelly, pioneered the foodies' favourite bird for flavour, the Kelly Bronze. It has picked up just about every turkey prize going in the last few years. I went to the family farm in Essex to have a look at these famous free-range birds. With their distinctive bronze feathers, they resemble the first wild turkeys which roamed the forests of the Americas.

Paul Kelly breeds nearly half a million of them a year, selling 400,000 as one-day-old chicks to selected farmers, who rear them to his specifications. He keeps back around 30,000, which he farms himself for the Christmas market. I joined him in the middle of the frenetic three-week period in which he and his team dry-pluck all the birds. In a large, airy, indoor space which resembled nothing so much as a Peter Greenaway film set, with spotlights picking out 50 or so heavily spattered pluckers at work.

Paul, 35, is the second-fastest turkey plucker in the world, beaten into the Guinness Book of Records by Irishman Vince Pilkington by five seconds in 1985. The record still stands at three minutes 45 seconds. You couldn't keep up that speed for very long. Paul plucks seven an hour, the best of the rest six, the average plucker four. Hen turkeys are easier to pluck than stags, simply because they are smaller.

The Kelly Bronze is the antithesis of the modern turkey - a fast-growing white bird which matures in three months. The latter is the modern cross-breed which made Bernard Matthews' fortune. In fact, Paul's father worked with Matthews in the early days of mass turkey production, but they parted company when Derek told Bernard he'd get nowhere if he ignored his voice of experience. Derek, of course, was spectacularly wrong.

In spite of this, Derek decided to take the slow road; in 1982, he bought up all the Bronze turkey flocks in the country. A slow-growing Kelly Bronze takes six months to reach maturity, thus costing the farmer twice as much to rear. But that's only a part of the flavour story. When the birds are slaughtered they are dry-plucked, a costly and labour-intensive operation compared to machine plucking, so that they can be hung for two weeks to develop their rich flavour.

Such tender loving care pushes up the cost. A Kelly bird (like others in this "traditional farm fresh" category, which are free-range, dry- plucked and hung) isn't cheap. It costs around pounds 2.30 to pounds 3.80 per pound, approximately twice the price of regular free-range turkeys (about pounds 1.70/lb), and five or six times more than frozen turkeys, which retail at around 59p per pound.

All the more reason to cook it carefully, then. Paul's times are based on exhaustive tests he has carried out with his family. But he insists: "All cooking times are only a guideline. Ovens vary, and many people open and close the doors too frequently, so bringing down the temperature. The ultimate test of a turkey's done-ness is to push a skewer into the thigh meat. When the liquid runs clear, it is cooked. If it's red or pink, it needs more time." But the turkey isn't then ready to eat, he is quick to explain. "It still needs to rest for half an hour before carving."

If Paul is right, why has everyone got roasting times so wrong for so long? "It's assumed that these figures have been passed down through the family, from your mother who got it from her mother and so on," he says. "But we don't have a long tradition of eating turkey here. Turkey only became widely available and popular in this country from the 1950s onwards."

If grandmother did cook turkey before then, she probably referred to Mrs Beeton, who was first published in 1862. And what time does the doyenne of cookery books give for a 10lb bird? No more than two hours, within five minutes of Paul's figure. This is a long way short of the three and a half hours that the 20-minute formula produces.

Actually, if truth be told, shorter times are standard in hotel and restaurant kitchens, though it's always supposed they are special cases with their furnace-like ovens. But they cook the bird at no more than 400F/ 200C/Gas Mark 6. The method they've adopted is to cook the bird on one side for 45 minutes, turn it on its other side for 45 minutes, and then lay it on its back and roast it for 20 to 30 minutes more.

So where did the British Turkey Information Service get its figures? Consultation within the trade and with various home economists, they say. But it seems that this complex discussion process has produced (there's no other word for it) a turkey.

"The BTIS is talking of revising its cooking times," says Paul Kelly. "They know there's a resistance to turkey meat because it's perceived to be too dry." And he offers a reason for the BTIS's position; paranoia about what might happen if frozen birds aren't properly thawed out before cooking.

We shouldn't mention the s-word, but just imagine if an outbreak of salmonella poisoning were traced to frozen birds that hadn't been fully thawed before roasting, and then not cooked long enough to kill any bugs. The BTIS would be kicked to hell and back.

I rang the BTIS. Yes, they said, they know what Paul Kelly is saying. And yes, they'd have a crisis to deal with if people started undercooking turkey, so yes, they might err on the conservative side. But did I not realise that the National Grid stutters on Christmas Day and there's a massive drop in power as every oven in the country is put on? You have to take the reduced capacity of your cooker into account, too.

But with the 20-minute formula, isn't the BTIS inviting everyone to cook their bird to death? "We do receive criticisms that turkey dries out. What we recommend is that turkey is cooked breast downwards, so that juices run down." Caught between a rock and a hard place, they are very unhappy bunnies. The choice is either to tell the Great British Public to cook every bird to destruction, or be held responsible for any accident that might occur.

The good news is that the salmonella bug is killed during cooking. Even better news is that it has never been identified in a single one of Paul Kelly's birds.

If you haven't yet ordered your Christmas bird, and if your pocket is deep enough, it is not too late to enjoy the Kelly adventure. Telephone orders (01245 223 581) are turned round within 24 hours.

If you want to abandon the BTIS's cautious cooking times, but hesitate to go the whole Paul Kelly hog, here's a compromise (left). This traditional French country recipe for turkey with chestnuts comes from Pierre Koffmann. Pierre roasts his 10lb turkey for approximately 12 minutes to the pound, plus 12 minutes. But you must, he says, test at the thick part of the thigh that the juices are clear.

Patience and skill (not to mention oven gloves and some stout kitchen tools) must be exercised in order to turn the weighty bird from side to side, bearing in mind that it will be very hot.

PERFECT ROAST TURKEY

Serves 10-12

1 turkey, about 4.5kg/10lb

100g/4oz duck fat

24 chestnuts, cooked and skinned (frozen or canned are fine)

50g/2oz carrots, diced

75g/3oz onions, diced

For the stuffing:

300g/11oz boneless chicken

200g/7oz pork back fat

100g/4oz breadcrumbs, soaked and squeezed dry

2 egg yolks

For the sauce:

200ml/7fl oz dry white wine

Preheat oven to 425F/220C/Gas Mark 7. Prepare stuffing by mincing the chicken and back fat. Add the breadcrumbs and egg, and season. Stir in the chestnuts and stuff the turkey. Sew up the opening with needle and thread.

Heat the duck fat in a roasting pan, place the turkey in the pan and seal it on all sides. Lay it on one leg and roast in the oven for 45 minutes, then turn it on to the other leg and roast for another 45 minutes. Place the bird on its back, add the vegetables and roast for a further 40 minutes, or until the juices run clear when you pierce the thickest part of the thigh with a skewer, basting from time to time.

When ready, place the turkey breast downwards on a dish while you make the sauce. Tip off the fat from the roasting pan, pour in the wine and reduce by two-thirds. Check the seasoning, strain the sauce, turn the turkey breast-side up and serve.