How to Carve Your Thanksgiving Turkey

Hyde Industrial Blade Solutions makes a lot of products, including food processing knives.

Those knives do carve turkeys, but they crave hundreds in a day. Chances are good that you’ll only need to carve one.

Carving just one turkey can be very stressful. A lot of time went into preparing that bird, you don’t want to be the one that butchers it (literally).

To help you carve your turkey this Thanksgiving, Hyde has put together a little tutorial that you might want to follow.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Chef’s knife
• Boning knife
• Cutting board
• Carving board (a thick, wood cutting board)
• Platter
• Tongs
• Cloth towel
• Paper towels or rubber gloves

Put your turkey on a carving board. Some chefs put their turkeys on a towel. The towel will prevent the turkey from slipping. Once on a carving board, remove the string that’s tying the legs together.

Cut through the skin connecting the breast and the leg with a chef’s knife. Separate the leg and thigh from the bird by pushing down. This will help expose the joint.

Slice through the joint to remove the leg and thigh. It might take several slices. Once it’s removed, set it on a cutting board.

To remove the wing, slice through the joint. Like you did with the leg and thigh, you might have to press down on the wing.

When you press it down, hold the turkey with a paper towel. You can forgo the paper towels if you wear rubber gloves.

Once the wing is free, set it aside.

Find and remove the wishbone. By doing so, you’ll make it easier to cut the breast meat.

Next, locate the turkey’s breast bone. Cut down, as close to the bone as possible, with a boning knife. Use your other hand to pull the meat away. The final product should be a large slab of breast meat.

You’ve carved one side of the turkey. Turn it around and repeat the above steps to carve the other side of the turkey.

Once you have the turkey carved, separate the drumsticks from the thighs. There’s a joint that connects the two. You’ll want to cut that joint. Set the thighs on the cutting board.

You can either place the drumsticks on a platter or you can carefully slice the meat off the bone.

Go back to the thigh. There’s a bone within the thigh. Use a knife to remove the bone. Once the bone is removed, sliced the thigh meat and place it on a platter.

When you slice your turkey breast, make sure you cut against the grain.

Also, whatever you’re slicing, make sure you keep the skin on.

Use tongs to steady the meat as you slice it.

Hyde Industrial Blade Solutions, manufactures of quality food processing knives, wishes everyone a happy Thanksgiving.