Homemade Deli Meat – Tutorial

I recently wrote about the health dangers of using processed lunch meats in a post titled “Healthy Homemade Options to Replace Deli Lunch Meats“.  In that post I talked about some alternatives to deli lunch meats including the idea of roasting a turkey breast, cooling it overnight while tightly wrapped and then slicing it thin for sandwiches.  I bought a turkey breast roast at the grocery store last week so I decided to take pictures of the whole process to show just how easy it really is to create your own turkey lunch meat without any added chemicals, fillers or preservatives.

The first step is to roast the turkey breast in the oven.  This roast was pre-tied with butcher’s string, but if you buy a whole bird it won’t be tied up already.  This is not a problem because the point of wrapping the meat really tightly in aluminum foil is to compact it while it cools for easier slicing the next day.

I roasted the turkey at 325 degrees until it reached a safe internal temperature of 165 degrees which took approximately 2 hours for this roast.

I wrapped the roast very tightly in aluminum foil and left it in the refrigerator overnight to completely cool.

The next day I unwrapped the roast and removed the butcher’s string. Then I used my super sharp Henckels carving knife to thinly slice it for sandwiches (a good knife is essential in every kitchen, I have had my set of Henckels knives for over 15 years since I got them as a wedding gift, and I still use them every day).  If you have an electric meat slicer, you could make all sorts of custom cuts for your sandwiches from paper thin shaved slices to thick buffet slices.

This technique works for any roast from turkey to pork to beef.  The important thing to remember is to wrap it tightly and cool it overnight so that it is very easy to slice evenly.

Have you ever tried making lunch meat the old fashioned way? If you have any tips, tricks or advice I would love to hear from you in the comments section below.