Christmas Turkey Roulade

Just in time for Christmas, here's what I'm making this year. It's basically a turkey, stuffed with seasoned meat, wrapped in bacon, dripping with baked honey. Yeah, I know... it sounds ridiculous. But this is amazing piping hot from the oven, or served cold with an Aussie salad, or re-heated later between two slices of crusty bread.

I'm recommending that you use a kitchen food thermometer with a probe for this recipe. It really is the best way to make sure you cook the bird the right way. If you don't have a digital thermometer with a probe then go get yourself one. They're cheap as chips and it will change your life (not really, but there's always that one person, right?) So anyway, cooking times may vary depending on your oven and other factors. But don't let this put you off--get in there and crank this turkey!

Do try to do your own thing here. Add some ingredients and make it your own. This is just a bare-bones, easy to build, monstrously satisfying bounty of meaty goodness.

MERRY FUCKING CHRISTMAS!

Ingredients

• 2kg Turkey Breast
• 1 Shallot, finely diced
• 500g Sausage Meat
• 1/2 handful Sage, fresh, chopped
• 2 Garlic Cloves, crushed
• Salt, to taste
• Pepper, fresh, coursely ground
• 750g Bacon, streaky
• 100g Honey, natural

Method

1. Pre-heat your oven to 200degC (180degC fan-forced).
2. Slice your turkey breast into 15mm fillets, cover with cling film and tenderise with a rolling pin. Season with Salt and pepper, cover and set aside, covered.
3. Combine the diced shallot, sausage mince/meat, sage and garlic. Season well with Salt and Pepper. Kneed and mix well with your hands and set aside in a bowl, covered.
4. On a large workspace, lay down a 40cm x 40cm piece of tinfoil. We'll use this to wrap a large sausage-shaped roulade.
5. Lay down 8-10 lengths of streaky bacon side by side in the middle of the tinfoil. It should roughly form a sqaure shape. This will form the wrapping for our roulade.
6. Completely cover the bacon with tenderised turkey fillets until the entire square of bacon is covered.
7. Fashion your sausage mix into a log and place it along the centre of the turkey/bacon square.
8. Now, here's the tricky part... carefully roll up the tinfoil to create a log around the sausage meat (which will form the filling of our roulade). Once you have a log, seal the ends off carefully like a Christmas cracker so that you have a good seal. You should now be looking at something that wouldn't look out of place as a movie prop in Barbarella.
9. Stick this weapon on a baking tray and leave in the oven until you have a core temperature of 65degC. Take it from the oven and let it rest until the core reaches 75degC. Once this happens, gently removed the tinfoil.
10. Crank up the oven to 220degC (200degC fan-forced), return the roulade to the oven and cook for a further 20-30 minutes until the bacon begins to crisp.
11. Take it out of the oven and drizzle with the honey. Return to oven and gently broil(grill) for another 10 minutes.
12. Remove from oven, let rest for 5 minutes, and serve with your favourite Aussie salad.