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Roast turkey with sweet potato stuffing
Serves 6-8 Starters and mains
Ingredients
- 4.5kg turkey
- 6tbsp goose fat
For the stuffing
- 1kg sweet potatoes
- 200g light bread, such as ciabatta
- 250g pancetta, cut into 2cm cubes
- 2tbsp olive oil
- 350g banana shallots
- 500g sausage meat
- 2tbsp thyme leaves
- 6 sage leaves, finely shredded
Method
Set your oven to 200C/400F/ Gas 6. Peel the sweet potatoes, cut into large pieces and steam over boiling water for 25 minutes. Tear the bread into stamp-size pieces, scatter on a baking sheet and bake until dry and pale gold.
Warm the oil in a pan and fry the pancetta cubes until the fat is golden. Peel and finely chop the shallots. Remove the pancetta, then soften the shallots in the same pan. Break up the sausage meat, stir into the ingredients in the pan, set aside.
Mash the sweet potatoes roughly with a fork, then add the bread, pancetta, shallots, thyme and sage. Season, mix and shape half into 16 balls, slightly bigger than golf balls. Stuff the other half of the mixture deep into the turkey.
Place the turkey in a roasting tin, baste generously with goose fat and roast for 25 minutes. Lower the heat to 180C/350F/ Gas 4 and continue roasting for 2 hours. Baste the turkey breast twice during this time with the cooking juices from the tin. When the bird has been cooking for 75 minutes, turn it over and place the stuffing balls around Alternatively, bake them in goose fat in a separate baking tin.
Remove the turkey from the oven and rest for 35-40 minutes. Don’t skip this stage no matter how much everyone pleads for their dinner.
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