Part of the appeal of cooking an entire turkey is its size — it’s the foundation of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner on visual and culinary fronts. But oversize turkeys require oversize cookware. For sous vide cooking, that cookware is usually a massive container of water. Here’s where a humble bucket comes in clutch: price and flexibility.
You can technically cook sous vide in anything that holds water, including stock pots, coolers and dedicated sous vide containers. But few of these options are as affordable as a 5-gallon food-grade bucket while also holding a whole Thanksgiving turkey. Best of all, you find them at practically any restaurant supply store or even some grocery stores for less than $10. Even when you account for the higher shipping costs of buying online — shipping isn’t typically free on these items — buckets still come out on top.
Choosing the right bucket
While the bucket spends most of the year in my closet, it’s also useful for making extra sous vide food for summer barbecues.
Before you run off to the hardware store, remember that you’ll need a food-grade bucket. This is because some plastics can contaminate food with microplastics or chemicals from the manufacturing process. This matters because even your sealed sous vide bags can collect residue that may transfer to your food during unpacking. When in doubt, it’s a good idea to check the bucket for food-safe indicators, like the HDPE and #2 recycling labels.
Snatch this 5-gallon food-grade bucket from Amazon.
Although restaurant supply stores should always have food-safe buckets on hand, you can also stop by a Firehouse Subs location for a pickle bucket like I did. For a $3 charitable donation, you get a stylish bucket and lid. Plus, the lid fits snugly while still being easy to remove. I find the pickle smell charming, and it doesn’t affect the food’s flavor, but there are ways to remove it.
You can maintain the temperature of the sous vide bath after you finish cooking to keep everything warm until dinner.
This is a popular option for food storage, home brewing and many food-related hobbies, so you may have to check back in if none are available on a given day. When I bought mine, the staff told me they usually go through several buckets a day. You can push the price even lower, according to Reddit, since some bakeries may give you used buckets for free — something to ask on your next doughnut run.
Prepping your bucket
Cutting a hole in the lid for your immersion circulator creates the best sous vide bucket setup.
Start by finding a place near the edge of the lid where your hole will be. You want enough space that the lid’s rim won’t block the sous vide machine’s clamp. Once you know the location, trace the bottom of your circulator on the lid.
Next, gather your cutting tools. For me, that meant using a power drill with a 2-inch hole saw — the same one I’ve used for smart lock testing. While this is the perfect size for my circulator, you might need something else for yours.
It takes very few tools to cut through a plastic lid.
Not everyone has a hole saw kicking around the house — and it’s not worth it to buy one just for this project — so the next best thing is a sharp utility knife. Since utility knives are retractable, you need only a short tip to pierce the bucket lid, and leather gloves are a wise precaution. From here, work the blade around the outline of the hole.
Place the lid on the bucket to double-check that the sous vide machine fits. You might need to widen the hole. Wash your bucket before use. The bucket may not fit under your faucet, so you might need to use a large pot to fill it (I use my regular sous vide container).
It takes a long time for a sous vide machine to heat nearly five gallons of water, so use the hottest water from your faucet to speed up preheating.
Your turkey will displace a lot of water when you put it in, so don’t fill the bucket too much. It’s always better to top it off afterward than to spill water everywhere. Most circulators have a max water level, so keep that in mind as well.
After the bucket is loaded, place it close enough for the cord to reach an electrical outlet. I keep mine on the counter near the sink, with a trivet below to help insulate the counter from the heat. Wrap a towel around the bucket and lid if you’re concerned about heating efficiency in a cold basement or garage.
Getting the turkey ready
I’m no chef, so I can’t give you a definitive way to prepare your sous vide turkey, but I’ll share some of the cooking tips I’ve used over the years.
The seasoning is up to you. I like to season generously with salt, pepper and fresh poultry herbs. If you’re preparing for Thanksgiving, plan to finish defrosting the turkey by Wednesday morning at the latest. This way, you’ll be able to cook for a full 24 hours if the recipe requires it.
Here are a few typical cook times to keep in mind:
- Sous Vide Ways recommends cooking the whole bird at 150 degrees Fahrenheit for 6 hours.
- Williams Sonoma also cooks at 150 F, but pulls the breasts out after 4 hours while the rest of the meat cooks for a total of 7 hours.
- Breville+ suggests 8 to 24 hours at 131 F for breasts; 24 hours between 140 F and 158 F (or 7 hours at 167 F).
Last Thanksgiving, I cooked the legs and thighs for 24 hours at 149 F. Then I lowered the sous vide temperature to 131 F upon adding the breasts for another 24 hours — yes, the dark meat experienced 48 hours of sous vide time. While the results were excellent, it was a lot of work. For this article, I cooked everything at 150 F for 24 hours to keep things simple — my neighbors loved it.
While you can finish the turkey in the oven for roasted skin, I love J. Kenji López-Alt’s method of roasting it separately — just remove the turkey skin before you bag the meat.
Bagging your turkey is essential, and it all depends on whether you keep it whole or break it down. For whole turkeys, you can use oven bags, which are strong enough to hold the entire bird. Simply place the seasoned turkey inside and lower it into the sous vide bath. The water will flush all of the air out of the open end of the bag.
Gently nudge stubborn air pockets out using a spoon until the bag tightly fills the cavity of the bird. Spatchcocking the turkey, as recommended by Sous Vide Ways, eliminates the cavity, and I can attest to the results. Ensure the bird is below the water line. Drape and anchor the open end of the bag over the rim of the bucket so water can’t get in.
This seal won’t be as tight as with a vacuum sealer, and you’ll need to use a higher cooking temperature to get better dark meat results. The sous vide turkey breast will still be amazing, but not nearly as good as cooking white meat and dark meat separately.
For perfect white meat and dark meat, it’s better to break down the turkey entirely.
The breakdown process is more time-intensive, but it opens the possibility of using a vacuum seal on your sous vide bag. While you can generally keep the bones in the thigh, leg and wing, the turkey breast is trickier. In my experience, it’s all too easy for sharp ribs to tear the bag while sealing the turkey breast meat, so deboning is preferable. Save the bones for turkey stock.
Another benefit of separate turkey pieces is that you don’t have to cook everything at once, which is great for small families. Seal everything up and put what you don’t need in the freezer for another day.
From planning to setup, sous vide turkey is a lot of work. (Though it’s not that different from any other cooking method.) Hopefully, I made it less daunting so that the first savory bite makes everything worth it.
