How To Cook The Perfect Christmas Turkey: Julia's Step By Step Recipe To Cook A Bronze Turkey For Christmas
Dec 04, 2025
Roasted Bronze Turkey With An Orange And Thyme Butter.
This recipe shows you how easy it is to cook our Bronze turkey to perfection. With meat of this quality, it really doesn’t need much. You don’t need to brine it, you don’t need to cook it all day, it is succulent and juicy after three hours in the oven and the orange and thyme butter complement the turkey perfectly. My top tips for a succulent bird is to take the turkey out of the fridge a couple of hours before cooking, so it comes to room temperature and also remember rest it for at least 45 minutes before carving.
Serves 10-12
Ingredients:
1 x 5kg Pheasants Hill Farm Bronze Turkey
3 carrots
1 head of celery
4 onions
3 cloves of garlic- finely chopped
A bunch of thyme- ½ finely chopped, ½ as whole sprigs
2 large oranges
350g of salted butter- room temperature
2 springs of rosemary
2 bay leaves
Salt and fresh ground black pepper
Equipment:
Meat temperature probe
Large turkey roasting tin
Thick turkey foil
Method:
1. Take your turkey out of the fridge for a couple of hours before cooking to allow it to come to room temperature.
2. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees C/Gas 6.
3. Make a trivet of vegetables for your turkey to roast on- chop three carrots, a head of celery and three onions and place in a large turkey roasting tray. Put your turkey on top.
4. Make your orange and thyme compound butter: add to a bowl your chopped garlic cloves, chopped sprigs of thyme (keep half back to stuff your turkey cavity), the zest of two oranges (keep the oranges for roasting), butter, salt and pepper and mix with your hands until everything is combined. Set aside.
5. Separate the skin from the breast- starting at the neck end of the turkey, use your fingers to very carefully separate the skin from the turkey breast. You need to be gentle here as to not tear the skin.
6. Put the compound butter under the skin- put half of your compound butter under the skin of the turkey, working from the neck end and pushing the butter towards to top of the breast. Massage the butter so its well packed between the skin and flesh.
7. Season the turkey cavity with salt and pepper and stuff the cavity with an orange, a chopped onion and the remaining thyme, rosemary and bay leaves.
8. Rub the remaining compound butter all over the turkey skin until the bird is completely covered. Season all over with salt and pepper.
9. Put the turkey into your preheated 200 Degrees C/ Gas 6 oven for 25 minutes.
10. Turn the oven down to 180 Degrees C/ Gas 4 and cook for a further 2.5 hours, until the juice run clear and your temperature prob reads 70-75 Degrees C. Remove your turkey from the oven and rest under two layers of thick aluminium foil for a minimum of 45 minutes.
11. Carve and enjoy!
