What is a turkey crown, and should I buy one instead of a whole turkey?

Almost every problem with roasting a whole turkey comes from one fact: the breast is done at a lower temperature than the legs, and it is on the outside where the heat is. A crown removes the conflict by removing the legs, which is why it has become the default for smaller Christmas dinners.

Step by step

1. Understand exactly what you are buying.Both breasts, still attached to the breastbone and rib cage, wings usually removed at the first joint or entirely, legs removed. It is not a boneless breast joint — the bone is what keeps it from drying out.
2. Work out whether it suits your table.A crown is the right answer for six to ten people who mostly eat white meat, for a small oven, or for a cook who wants the timing to be simple. A whole bird is better where people want leg meat, where you want a carcass for stock, or where the theatre matters.
3. Expect roughly half the roasting time of a whole bird.Less mass, less depth and no dense legs. A crown is done considerably sooner than a per-kilo whole-turkey chart suggests, which catches people out in both directions. Probe it rather than trusting the chart.
4. Protect the breast for the first part of the cook.Butter under the skin, streaky bacon laid over the top, or a foil cover for the first two-thirds and off for the last third. The breast is fully exposed on a crown, which is the trade-off for the even cooking.
5. Cook to a probe reading in the thickest part of the breast.Push the probe into the deepest part of one breast, well clear of the bone, and take the lowest reading. Poultry needs to be cooked through, and the probe is the only reliable evidence — colour and clear juices are not.
6. Rest it properly, and for longer than feels sensible.Thirty to forty minutes loosely tented. A crown holds heat well and the rest genuinely improves it. This is also the window in which the roast potatoes finish.
7. Buy the legs separately if you want them.Turkey legs are cheap, and they suit long, slow cooking — braised, or slow-roasted and shredded — far better than the same oven session as the breast. This is arguably a better dinner than roasting the whole bird.

Tips

• Ask the butcher to keep the removed legs and carcass, or buy a bag of turkey wings, if you want gravy and stock. Losing them is the real cost of a crown.
• Dry-brining a crown a day ahead — salted, uncovered, on a rack in the fridge — improves it more than anything else you can do to it.
• A boneless rolled turkey breast joint is a different product again. It cooks faster still, dries more readily, and being rolled it must be cooked through rather than left blushing.

Common mistakes

• Using a whole-turkey time chart for a crown — It has no legs and much less mass. The chart substantially overcooks it, which is the usual reason people find a crown dry.
• Probing near the breastbone — The bone reads hotter than the meat around it, so you take it out early on the strength of a false reading. Probe the thickest part of the meat, angled away from the bone.

Questions people ask