“I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; like those among men who live by sharking and robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy. The turkey is a much more respectable creature”–Benjamin Franklin
How to Cook a Turkey
There are three main ways to cook a turkey — roast in the oven, fry in a fryer, or barbecue on the grill. Wondering how to make the perfect succulent turkey for your next family meal? I recommend roasting in the oven for the most delicious turkey possible — but there are some differences between my recipe and the standard “roast turkey” recipe.
For starters, I always recommend buying the “best” turkey available, but especially for roasting purposes. This means buying an “organic, free range” bird and spending a little extra cash, but the end result is always worth it.
You may have seen people “stuffing” turkey before roasting it, but this usually just makes the bird more difficult to cook evenly, and produces an inferior stuffing. DON’T STUFF your turkey — prepare the stuffing on the side. The turkey, and your guests, will be better off for it.
Ingredients:
- 1 turkey, preferably around 15 pounds
- Juice of one lemon
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Olive oil and melted butter (yum!)
- 1/2 yellow onion, peeled and quartered
- one bunch of celery
- 2 carrots
- Parsley
- A few sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme
Bring your turkey to room temperature before preparing and cooking. If your turkey is frozen, you’ll need to defrost it appropriately. Place the turkey in a pan in the refrigerator and allow 5 hours of defrosting time per pound of the turkey — for our 15 pound bird, that means about 75 hours of defrosting time. Plan ahead.
Remove the neck and giblets from your room temperature turkey. Keep the neck, heart, and gizzard for making stock or flavoring the stuffing, but put them aside for now. Besides, they look gross.
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Wash your turkey out with water and rinse the body of the bird really well. Pull out any remaining “feather stubs” you may find in the skin. Pat the bird dry. Coat the inside of the turkey’s body with lemon juice, then rub salt and pepper on the inside of the bird.
How to Cook a Turkey
Since you’ve already agreed to make stuffing outside of the bird, let’s flavor the inside of the turkey a little differently. This is the most important step of the beast roast turkey you’ve ever hard — the internal ‘flavor’ mix.
Put half a yellow onion, peeled and quartered, inside the turkey along with as much parsley and fresh herbs as you want, a couple of chopped carrots, and the tops and bottoms of a bunch of celery.
Place a cap over the hole in the body of the turkley with aluminum foil so that your “flavor mix” doesn’t fall out so easily.
Close up the turkey cavity with string or even metal skewers. You want the turkey’s legs to be tied together and held close to the body. Don’t forget about the wings — tie a string around the turkey body to hold the wings in close to the body of the bird.
Rub melted butter and olive oil all over the outside of the turkey’s body. Sprinkle salt and pepper all over the body of the turkey.
Place the turkey breast-side down (very important) on the bottom rack of an oven inside of a sturdy roasting pan that is big enough to capture drippings. Why breast-side down? This is an old trick I learned from my Italian grandmother, who learned it from her mother, and on and on and on. Cooking the turkey breast down means the skin over the breast won’t get as brown as most Americans cook it, BUT the turkey breast will be juicy and perfect, as the juices drip down and onto the breast meat. Trust me — cook your turkey breast down.
Cook your turkey about fifteen minutes for every pound — as long as yours is an organic, free range turkey. Other birds are tougher and take more time.
Start your bird at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for the first half hour, then reduce to 350 for an additional 2 hours, finally roast your turkey at a low 225 degrees for the next hour or hour and a half.
To check your roasting turkey, use a meat thermometer about a half hour before “done” time. The dark meat in the thigh should be about 175 degrees, while the white meat in the breast should be 160 to 165 degrees. If you don’t have a meat thermometer, spear the breast with a knife and watch the juices — the turkey juices should be clear, not pink.
Once your turkey is done, let it rest at room temperature for 20 minutes before carving.
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