Chris Morocco's Revolutionary Turkey Leg Recipe: A Thanksgiving Game-Changer

Dec 03, 2025 0

Forget the traditional roasted turkey this Thanksgiving and embrace a new star: turkey legs infused with the flavors of confit garlic, guajillo chiles, and oregano. This recipe, crafted by Epi Test Kitchen director Chris Morocco, promises to transform your holiday feast.

Photo by Joseph De Leo, Prop Styling by Megan Hedgpeth, Food Styling by Rebecca Jurkevich

Why Turkey Legs?

Chris Morocco admits he isn't a fan of roasted dark meat turkey, arguing that in a typical roast, the dark meat is often shielded from the oven's heat. This prevents the skin from getting crispy and the thigh from cooking thoroughly. To solve this, he drew inspiration from duck confit, incorporating aromatics from the Mexican pantry for a warm, savory flavor.

The Confit Technique

To create this dish, whole turkey legs are placed in a baking dish and seasoned with black pepper and a touch of brown sugar, along with smashed cloves of garlic. This mixture cures for two to twelve hours, with twelve hours being the recommended duration. After curing, guajillo chiles, halved heads of garlic, and sprigs of oregano are added. The legs are then submerged in oil and cooked slowly for several hours, creating a tantalizing aroma that fills the kitchen.

The result? Turkey legs that are luxuriously tender with a flavor reminiscent of carnitas. The meat shreds beautifully and boasts a crispy skin.

Photo by Joseph De Leo, Prop Styling by Megan Hedgpeth, Food Styling by Rebecca Jurkevich

The Magic of Salsa Macha

The dish is finished with a salsa macha-inspired sauce made by blending the oil-poached chiles with almonds and sesame seeds. This sauce adds a punch of flavor and texture, making it an irresistible addition to any dish.

Don't forget about the garlic confit that cooks with the turkey. Squeeze the softened, golden cloves out of their husks and spread them on toast or add them to a Thanksgiving cheese plate.

Leftover Gold

You'll be left with flavorful fat: the aromatic oil leftover from cooking the turkey legs, chiles, and garlic. Strain that oil and stash it in your fridge overnight. As it chills, the fat will separate and solidify above a smaller amount of rendered turkey stock. Save both, and use the sticky, gelatinous spiced stock as the base of a soup and that fat for roasting potatoes, frying eggs, or making cornbread.

This turkey leg recipe is the centerpiece of our Thanksgiving for a Small Crowd menu, one of several meal plans we put together for what's sure to be a holiday season unlike any other. If you're contending with two instead of the four to six people this recipe serves, you could scale back to one leg. But we suggest going ahead with the whole recipe.

The turkey confit leftovers are as good-or even better-than the roasted turkey leftovers you might've had in years past. (Plan ahead for taco Black Friday.) Plus, the meat freezes beautifully and reheats like a dream, in case you want to savor this better-than-ever Thanksgiving feast again a little later down the line.

How to Carve a Turkey

Roasting Turkey in Parts: An Alternative Approach

Roasting a broken-down turkey in parts has distinct benefits over roasting a whole bird. When I say “in parts,” I mean breaking it down into legs, wings, and a bone-in breast, and roasting these on a large rimmed baking sheet. This method allows seasoning to reach previously inaccessible parts of the bird, putting salt in places it otherwise has a hard time reaching. It promotes deeper browning, enhanced fat rendering, and crispier skin because the oven’s heat can hit more surface area, faster. That means cooking and resting times are greatly reduced.

Combining that technique with some turkey best practices (using a dry rather than wet brine; starting in a hot oven, then reducing the temperature; basting with a glaze rather than pan juices; resting the meat adequately before carving) produces roast turkey as it should be: juicy meat wrapped in burnished crisp skin. And the dark meat is a revelation here. Instead of being stuck under most of the turkey, steaming away as the top of the bird roasts, the legs are exposed to just as much heat as the breast is, pushing them past cooked-yet-still-bouncy into full tenderness.

If there is one fault with this approach, it is that presenting a bunch of turkey parts-however amazing they look-isn’t quite as dramatic as a whole bird. That is a visual you will just have to let go of. Because in return, literally everything about the turkey will be better. Best of all, whoever you serve it to will have a full year to talk about how great it was before they eat turkey again. Maybe some things are better kept for special occasions after all.

How to Break Down a Turkey

Here's a step-by-step guide to breaking down a turkey for roasting in parts:

Read also: Chris Mubiru's football journey

Place a 12-14-lb. turkey, breast side up, on a large cutting board and pat dry.
Grip a wing and pull it outward so you can see where it attaches to the body. Using a sharp boning or chef’s knife, cut through the joint to separate the wing from the breast. If you hit bone, you’re in the wrong spot; pull the wing out farther to help you get into the place where the joint meets the socket. Remove wing; repeat on the other side.
Cut through skin connecting 1 leg to carcass.
Pull leg back until ball joint pops out of its socket; cut through the joint to separate leg. Repeat on the other side.
Now for the breast. You can roast the breast as is with the backbone attached, or you can turn the breast over (as shown below) and trim the lower part of the backbone that was formerly adjacent to the legs by breaking it at the midpoint or, using a sturdy chef’s knife, by cutting between the vertebrae to divide it.
Coarsely grind 1 Tbsp. black peppercorns in a spice mill or with a mortar and pestle; transfer to a medium bowl. Add ⅔ cup Diamond Crystal kosher salt, 2 Tbsp. garlic powder, and 2 Tbsp. light brown sugar and mix dry brine together with your fingers. Place turkey pieces, skin side up, on a wire rack set inside a rimmed baking sheet.
Sprinkle dry brine liberally all over both sides of turkey, patting to adhere. You may not need all of it, but it’s good to start out with extra since some will end up on the baking sheet. It is important to have the turkey elevated on a rack so it absorbs the salt mixture evenly (rather than sitting in a pile of salt on the baking sheet).