We Tested 4 Ways For Crispy, Golden Turkey Skin—Here's What Actually Works

There are several key techniques for achieving deeply golden, crisp skin on a roast turkey. First, there's dry brining, in which the bird is sprinkled all over with salt and left to sit, uncovered, for at least one full day. That's enough time for the salt to draw water out of the turkey, dissolve into it to form a brine on its surface, and then be absorbed deeply into the turkey itself. At the same time, the skin dries out, which speeds browning and crisping once the roast goes into the oven (because browning is delayed in the presence of water).

Second, as Serious Eats senior culinary editor, Leah Colins, has explained, you absolutely should not baste the bird. All basting does is drop the oven temperature every time you open the door to splash more of the roasting juices on top, which is exactly the opposite of what you should be doing if you want golden, crisp skin. Plus, the basting juices often contain water in addition to rendered fat, which again slows browning.

But that doesn't mean there's no logic to the idea of basting: Coating your turkey skin with some form of fat can, in theory, help it to brown and crisp more quickly and evenly. The question, then, is which fat?

The Testing

I decided to run a quick test to see how much difference the most common skin treatments make on a roast turkey. To do so, I bought four skin-on, boneless turkey breast halves and dry-brined them, uncovered, for 24 hours in my refrigerator. Then I prepared the four uncooked breast halves by rubbing each of the following on the skin:

• No Coating: A dry-brined turkey breast with nothing rubbed on the skin was my control. It would help determine whether any of the other treatments made a noticeable difference.
• Oil: I rubbed a thin layer of neutral cooking oil—such as canola, vegetable, or corn—over the skin. You could also use an oil with flavor, like olive oil.
• Butter: Butter is mostly dairy fat, but it also contains water (the enemy of browning and crisping), and milk sugars and proteins (friends of browning and crisping). I rubbed a very thin layer of softened unsalted butter all over my turkey breast skin for good, even coverage.
• Mayonnaise: I first learned about rubbing mayonnaise on poultry, such as turkey, from chef Thomas Keller, whom I interviewed more than a decade ago for a Thanksgiving article I was writing for Food & Wine magazine. The idea got more attention when Kenji recently endorsed it in The New York Times. You can slather the mayo on, but to keep my testing fair, I applied a light coating here as well to keep it aligned with the quantities of oil and butter I used on the other samples. The advantages of mayo are that it clings well and doesn't drip off easily, provides seasoning, and includes ingredients like egg yolk that aid browning (though, like butter, it also has water content from the lemon juice or vinegar).

I arranged the four samples on a baking sheet, one at each corner, and roasted them at 425°F (220°C) until cooked through. I used the convection setting on my oven to circulate air and rotated the baking sheet once during cooking to minimize the effects of oven hot spots. Aside from that, I made a point of not opening the oven door at all or otherwise interfering with the turkey samples while they were cooking. Once finished, I let them rest briefly, examining the skin's appearance and crispness (by touching or tapping it) while I waited, then sliced into them to sample the skin once they were cool enough to handle.

The Results

The three coatings led to nearly identical results: nicely browned, crisp skin that glistened. The control with no coating was noticeably less brown and not as crisp, and also slightly tough. The mayo sample had slightly deeper browning than the butter or oil samples, but this difference was relatively minor, and none of the samples was noticeably crispier than the others. Flavor-wise, I couldn't really tell much of a difference, though I imagine a heavier coating of mayo may offer a more obvious flavor boost.

One thing worth noting is that, because I was roasting boneless turkey breast halves, the cooking time was significantly shorter than that of a whole turkey. If you apply a fat coating to an entire turkey, you will achieve even deeper browning than what's visible here, thanks to an extended cooking time.

The Takeaway

The bottom line is that any fat evenly coating the turkey skin will help it brown and crisp more deeply and evenly in the oven. You do not need to worry much about which kind of fat you use, or even if some fat options like mayo and butter have water content, since it evaporates away quickly as the turkey roasts, while the browning agents like proteins and sugars in the butter and mayo compensate for whatever downside there is to the water's initial presence.

What's ultimately most important is the thin layer of fat spread all over the skin before roasting, which helps transfer heat more efficiently and lets the surface reach browning temperatures faster than bare skin would.