"carving" news and stories

You spend a good deal of time buying, prepping, and preparing ingredients. You may have even brined your turkey (please do!). But have you ever gone through all of that, and then you're faced with a wonderfully cooked bird and have no idea how to take it apart efficiently? The last thing you want to do after making an excellent turkey is mutilate it with bad technique or haphazard slices.

The above video should give you a quick and easy reference on how to cut and plate your turkey. This outlines taking care of the gobbler in the kitchen, but if you'd prefer to do it at the table, just slightly modify it to fit your needs (slice the breast meat piece by piece off the ones rather than in a chunk).

Good luck! And please, share any other carving tips you have below!

A couple of weeks ago I got a call from my dad. He had phoned because he had just watched one of the Thanksgiving episodes of Fork You and wanted to give me a little advice. The piece of wisdom? Never offer to show someone how to do something on camera if, in fact, you don't know how to do it. The thing I didn't know how to do? Carve a turkey!

I agreed with him and explained that I didn't know that I was going to be asked to show the folks at home how to carve a turkey, it just sort of happened. However, now that I've been in that situation, I'm now making a point of learning how to carve a turkey. Thankfully, the New York Times printed a helpful article today with step-by-step instructions on the best way to carve up your Thanksgiving bird. Their tip? Do the carving away from the table in the kitchen for best results.

[via Eat]

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It's Sunday, y'all, and if I actually had a big family for whom to cook, I'd be starting a roast in the oven right now. Of course, it's a while before I get to the bg family part, but at least I can prepare myself.

Associated Content has a helpful piece on how to carve various types of meat. Now, I realize that many of you already know how to carve a roast turkey, a roast pork loin, a roast lamb shoulder, but let this just be a little reminder for you, and a new lesson for the rest of us. The three major takeaways: 1) have the proper equipment, 2) cut across the grain, and 3) keep a warmed serving platter.

A well-cut ham should be as symmetrical as an accordion, but carving up the Easter centerpiece isn't always the easiest. task. RecipeTips offers a detailed guide to carving ham, showing how to carve up different cuts of ham ranging from a whole ham to a butt ham, while Jones Dairy Farm also has a list of videos for cutting up the meat. More knife action is available on Cooking.com, which offers an instructional video on both preparing and cutting the meat. Tips recommended by these sites include using a very sharp thin knife and letting the ham cool 10 minutes before cutting so the juice is redistributed.

 

 

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We've seen strangely shaped watermelons and monster watermelons, but we have yet to see watermelon carving of the magnitude found in this online gallery. The horse and cyclist, shown above, are two of my favorites, though the skiier and Taj Mahal are very impressive. Watermelons are natural canvases for food art due to their large size and thick but easily carved rind. The fact that they are colorful is an added bonus. With a sharp knife and a steady hand, it does not seem like it would be that difficult to carve a basic pattern into a watermelon - after all, thousands of children carve into pumpkins every year, and watermelon carving does not require you to gut the fruit before starting.

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