Trussing a Turkey Is Actually Pretty Easy (If You Must)

Trussing a turkey, or chicken for that matter, is much easier than you might think. When I hear “truss,” I often think of a pork tenderloin or other long boneless roast that gets tied with a series of knots to keep the roast in shape. Trussing a whole bird is nothing like that. In a few simple steps, and very little kitchen string, you can attractively shape your poultry for roasting. 

Do you need to truss a turkey?

Just in case you weren't aware, you should know that you don’t have to truss a turkey for Thanksgiving. You could spatchcock the turkey to save time and achieve more even cooking, or just roast it in parts. If trussing is an essential part of your Thanksgiving plans, though, I'm happy to help you through it.

How to truss a turkey

Trussing meat generally means tying it in a certain way to help keep an attractive shape. That shape for a turkey or chicken looks like a rounded breast, neatly tucked wings, and modestly arranged legs.

To do that, once your bird has been properly thawed, the neck and giblets have been removed, and the turkey has been thoroughly brined, you should place it, breast side-down, on a baking sheet. I have mine on a wire rack over the sheet so any juices will drip away and make handling the bird less slippery.

1. Pin the neck skin

Turkeys are usually left with a fairly large flap of neck skin available. This can be pinned down the back of the bird, which gives you a tidy, well-rounded shape. It’s also useful to hold ingredients in the cavity if you stuff the turkey.

Take a long bamboo skewer and poke it through the skin on the back, one side of the neck skin, and secure it the same way on the other side. If you don’t have a long skewer, or you’re trussing a much smaller bird, you can do this with two toothpicks, one securing each side.

2. Tuck the wings

Flip the turkey over so the breast is now facing up toward the ceiling. You’ll see the wings are chilling on the side of your bird, sharp little wingtips pointing upward. If you leave it like this, the tips will likely burn, so tucking them can help prevent that. So can wrapping them in foil, but we’re trussing today. 

Use one hand to bend the wing down by the joint, and the other hand to lift the breast up while you tuck the wingtip underneath. It'll just hook behind where you pinned the neck skin. If the bird is properly thawed, this won’t be hard to do. Repeat this on the other side. If you’re stuffing the turkey, now is a good time to do it; before the legs get tied.

3. Tie the legs

The last step is tying the turkey's legs. You might have seen some trussing techniques where you need feet of kitchen twine available and you wrap around the body first and loop around to tie the feet. That’s unnecessary since we’ve already secured the wings. 

Have about 10 inches of kitchen string cut and ready. Cross the drumsticks at the bone—they’ll kind of hook neatly onto each other—and wrap the crossed bones with string. There’s no need to overcomplicate it. Wrap the string round three or four times and tie the ends. Honestly, if it’s wrapped enough, you don’t even have to tie a knot, you can just tuck the string between the legs.

And just like that, trussing has been achieved. Your turkey should probably look like the image of a perfect cartoon turkey now. Well, it will once it comes out of the oven, anyway. Proceed to roast the turkey as your recipe directs, and if you don’t have one of those, here’s a good simple one with cooking times and temperatures.