Anne Morgan For a smaller Christmas lunch, Delia Smith’s turkey crown roasts the breast on the bone under butter and smoked pancetta for 2 hours 20 minutes at 200°C. Apricot and pistachio stuffing balls wrapped in more pancetta then join it for the last half hour, while the tin juices become a white wine gravy. It serves 4 with Boxing Day leftovers.
You won’t find it in her cookbooks, at least not in any I can find. It’s one of the cheat’s recipes on her own website, where a crown means the breast alone, left on its bone so it stays juicy and full of flavour.
The cheating is honest and mostly in the shopping. A pack of ready-made sage and onion stuffing becomes the stuffing balls, and the cranberry sauce needs only three ingredients and one small pan.
It’s a much shorter job than a whole bird, where Delia Smith’s turkey cooking times run to about five hours at three oven temperatures under a tent of foil. Here there’s one temperature, and the pancetta does most of the basting.
Delia Smith’s Cheats’ Turkey Crown with Pancetta
Course: Main CourseCuisine: BritishDifficulty: Easy4
servings15
minutes2
hours20
minutes830
kcalCrisp-topped, moist and on the table in under three hours, with a sweet-sharp sauce to pass round.
Ingredients
- For the turkey:
3.15kg (7lb) turkey crown
75g (3oz) butter, softened
2 x 100g packs sliced smoked pancetta
salt and freshly milled black pepper
- For the stuffing balls:
340g pack ready-made sage and onion stuffing
50g (2oz) ready-to-eat dried apricots
25g (1oz) shelled natural pistachios, toasted under the grill for 3 to 4 minutes
- For the gravy:
340ml (12fl oz) dry white wine
- For the cranberry, balsamic and sage sauce:
3 tablespoons cranberry jelly
1½ tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 dessertspoon chopped fresh sage
salt and freshly milled black pepper
Directions
- Heat the oven: Preheat it to 200°C, fan 180°C, gas mark 6.
- Butter and pancetta: Put the crown in a large roasting tin, spread the soft butter all over it and season it well. Set aside 8 slices of pancetta for the stuffing balls and lay the rest over the top of the crown.
- Roast: Cook the crown for 2 hours 20 minutes. After about 45 minutes, lift off the pancetta, which should be brown and crisp by then, and keep it warm.
- Baste and cover: Baste the crown twice during the rest of the cooking, and lay a 23cm square of foil over it for the last 20 minutes.
- Stuffing balls: Roughly chop the apricots and pistachios, mix them into the stuffing and shape 8 even balls. Wrap each one in a slice of the saved pancetta and put them on a tray lined with baking parchment on another shelf for the last 30 minutes, turning them after 15.
- Sauce: Put the cranberry jelly, balsamic vinegar and sage in a small pan and whisk over a gentle heat until the jelly melts. Season and pour into a jug.
- Rest: Move the cooked, golden crown to a warm serving dish, cover it with foil and leave it for 15 minutes. Warm the plates while it rests.
- Gravy: Spoon the fat off the roasting tin, set the tin over a medium heat on the hob and pour in the wine. Whisk it into the juices, let it bubble until it has reduced by about a third, season and pour into a jug.
Notes
- She names one supermarket's stuffing but says a similar pack will do, so use whichever sage and onion stuffing you like.
- Give the crisp pancetta a few minutes back in the oven just before serving if it has gone cold.
- The fan temperature is my own conversion. Cool any leftovers and get them into the fridge within 2 hours, then eat them within 2 days, which is standard UK food safety advice.
FAQs
How long does a turkey crown take to cook?
Twenty minutes per 450g (1lb) at 200°C is her rule for a smaller crown, which works out at roughly 44 minutes a kilo. By my own sums, that’s about 1 hour 20 minutes for 1.8kg, 1 hour 30 minutes for 2kg, 1 hour 50 minutes for 2.5kg and just under 3 hours for 4kg.
Whatever the weight, add the resting time on top. A crown has no legs for her usual skewer test, so I’d check the thickest part of the breast reads at least 75°C on a probe, with clear juices and no pink, which is my own check rather than hers.
Is a turkey crown better than a whole turkey?
Not on price, in Delia’s view. In Delia’s Happy Christmas (2009) she notes that crowns had become very popular but cost about the same as a whole bird.
Her cheaper idea in that book is pot-roasting two turkey drumsticks of about 700g each with port, red wine, smoked bacon rolls, shallots and chestnuts, enough for 6. The legs are rich and succulent, and the whole dish can be made ahead and reheated.
What size turkey crown do I need?
The 3.15kg crown on the card feeds 4 with plenty left for Boxing Day. If you’d rather not have leftovers, she suggests a smaller crown of 1.8 to 2kg (4 to 4½lb).
Can I make my own stuffing balls?
Yes. Her own pork, sage and onion stuffing in Delia’s Happy Christmas uses 900g of pork sausagemeat, 25g of sage, 75g of stale white bread and a large onion, and she says you can make half if that seems a lot.
Half her batch comes to well over 340g, so you’ll have a few extra balls, and she likes spare stuffing cold in sandwiches. Mix in the apricots and pistachios and wrap the balls in pancetta just the same, which is my own suggestion.
Can I use streaky bacon instead of pancetta?
Yes, smoked streaky rashers should work just as well. Her classic whole turkey is covered with very fat streaky bacon rather than pancetta.
That swap is my own, not part of this recipe. Lift the rashers off once they’re crisp, as she does on her whole bird, so the skin underneath can brown.
