I managed to get my hands on a huge, whole deboned turkey breast and seeing that I’m trying everything out with my homemade guanciale, I decided to grill the breast, wrapped in guanciale over an open fire in a rotisserie basket.
You can obviously replace the guanciale with pancetta or bacon, although the guanciale adds a unique taste to the turkey meat.
Ingredients
- 1 whole, deboned turkey breast – can weigh anything from 2kg to 3kg
- +/- 300g of guanciale, 2mm slices in the length – enough to cover most of the turkey breast
- Fine black pepper
- Garlic powder or flakes
- Handful of fresh sage
- Handful of fresh thyme
- 1/2 lemon rind, grated
Method
Sprinkle black pepper and garlic mildly over the inner side of the breast. Put the thyme, sage and lemon rind on top of that.
Roll the breast length-wise up and tie with butchers twine every +/-5 cm.
Stuff the guanciale between the twine and breast, covering the breast as much as possible.
Secure the breast in a rotisserie cage and cook over medium heat for about 4 hours.
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The trick is to render as much fat as possible out of the guanciale without burning it.
After the turkey breast is done, wrap it in foil and let it rest for 30 minutes.
Carve the breast in slices, add some of the guanciale on top of the meat and serve with your favourite side dishes.
We served this with two side dishes out of Ottolenghi’s cookbook, called Simple. The one is a cauliflower, pomegranate and pistachio salad and the other one Ottolenghi’s Puy Lentils and Eggplant.
An excellent Bon Courage Le Terrior 2016 Chardonnay paired very well with the food.
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