Low And Slow Creole Butter Turkey Breast Recipe

Roasting turkey in the oven, especially a whole bird, is the kind of ordeal you may only want to go through for holidays and other special occasions. Cooking boneless turkey breast in a crockpot, however, is as easy as can be. Recipe developer Patterson Watkins was pretty excited to discover this. "I've never slow-cooked a turkey breast before! This was really cool — it worked, it totally worked. I'm gonna be doing this more often; home-cooked turkey is no longer a seasonal thing for me." Watkins takes the recipe up a notch by using a meat injector to infuse the turkey breast with a Creole-spiced butter, which means that every bite is rich, tender, and flavor-packed.

For her main meal, Watkins says she served this Creole-seasoned turkey and gravy alongside classic holiday sides such as mashed potatoes and green beans. Other sides she suggests include macaroni and cheese and stuffing, but as a nod to the seasoning blend, you could also lean hard into the regionality of this recipe by pairing it with okra, maque choux, beans and rice, collards, cornbread, or hush puppies. As for the leftovers, she tells us, "I've made so many awesome turkey sandwiches. I recreated those school-lunch hot turkey sandwiches (open-faced and smothered in gravy). Creole turkey clubs were especially tasty. I even whipped up a Cajun-themed turkey tetrazinni (kicking it way old school, and it was scrumptious)."

The main ingredient in this dish is turkey breast, but you'll also need carrots, celery, and yellow onion to flavor it, plus some flour to thicken the gravy. For the flavorful injection, you'll need butter, Cajun or Creole seasoning, garlic powder, and powdered chicken bouillon.

Melt the butter in a small skillet over medium heat.

Add the Cajun seasoning, garlic powder, and bouillon to the melted butter, stir to combine.

Simmer the seasoned butter for 1 minute, stirring occasionally, or until most of the seasonings have dissolved.

Transfer the seasoned butter to a meat injector. (Save any remaining butter to coat the turkey).

Inject the turkey with the seasoned butter, creating about 1 dozen evenly-spaced 'poke.' Be sure not to poke all the way through the turkey.

Coat the outside of the turkey with the remaining butter.

Place the carrots, celery, and onion in the bottom of your slow cooker.

Place the seasoned turkey on top of the veggies, cover, and slow cook on low for 6 hours or until the turkey is cooked through.

Once cooked, remove the turkey from the slow cooker and set it aside to rest for 15 minutes.

Strain the pan dripping using a fine mesh strainer (discard the veggies).

Skim about 2 tablespoons of melted butter off the surface of the drippings.

Place the skimmed butter in a small saucepan over medium heat, add the flour, and whisk to combine the roux.

Add the pan drippings to the saucepan, whisk to combine with the roux, and bring to a simmer.

Cook, whisking frequently, until the gravy thickens. Keep warm until ready to serve.

Once the turkey has rested, slice it thinly.

Serve the sliced turkey with the gravy.

Patterson Watkins tells us, "Creole/Cajun butter injected turkey is a 'thing,' a very tasty 'thing.' Injecting the seasoning into meat, as well as coating the exterior, ensures a super flavorful and juicy final product — without all the brine fuss." Using a meat injector may seem as simple as sucking up some sauce, sticking a needle into the meat, and pressing plunge, but there's actually a lot more to it than that. For starters, know your needles. These come in different sizes, but the one with a single large opening in the tip is best for this recipe since it's least likely to clog. If you do have a clogging problem, though, one solution is to strain the butter before adding it to the injector. You can save the strained-out spices and mix them into the butter you'll be applying to the outside of the turkey. If your spice mix is really chunky, you can also grind it into a fine powder using a coffee or spice grinder or a mortar and pestle before adding it to the butter.

Another tip for using the injector is to work quickly, since after a dozen pokes like you'll be making here, the butter will be cooling off and starting to thicken. One way to circumvent this is to invert the injector and swirl the butter every few pokes. Another is to fill the injector only halfway, then refill it with warm melted butter after six pokes.

If you're looking to make this dish for a holiday celebration, you might be wondering if you can adapt the recipe to cook a whole turkey or even a whole chicken. Watkins warns, "The trick here is that you want to make sure that everything will comfortably fit into your slow cooker, with some wiggle room for heat circulation." She says that a very small bird (under 8 pounds) might work — if it fits. She suggests adding 3 hours to the cook time if you're going this route.

She also suggests that you could use a portioned turkey — quartered or 6-piece. You'd need to add about the same amount of cooking time. Whole wings, thighs, or a bone-in breast should also work. Use a meat thermometer to check for doneness — it should read 165 F when your turkey or chicken is fully cooked. For more meat, you may also want to increase the amount of seasoned butter you use. Watkins suggests doubling the amount if you're using a whole bird and scaling down from there. She tells us that bone-in options will produce more pan drippings, and you'll probably have sufficient pan liquid and fat to make a double batch of gravy, though you may need to add more flour to get the desired thickness.