A Turkey Tutorial

With Thanksgiving a couple of days away, I thought I'd send along some turkey directions. My sister just made her first turkey for an event her church group hosted at a retirement home, and wanted step-by-step directions on what to do. It's no Butterball Talk-Line, but she told me it made the process really easy. AND, once you know how to make a turkey, you basically know how to make a roast chicken (you'd just need to shorten the cooking time).

If you're making a turkey this year, good luck and have fun. If not, I hope you'll try it (or a roast chicken) in the future, and let me know how it turns out! Happy Thanksgiving!

A Turkey Tutorial:

First, make sure your turkey is defrosted. If you get your turkey a few days before Thanksgiving, you'll want to leave it in the packaging and in the fridge until the day of - that's the best way to defrost. However, if you don't plan ahead and get your turkey a day before or the day of (too scary), you'll want to defrost it in water in the sink. Place the turkey in the sink, cover it with cold water, and let it sit for 20 minutes. Drain the water, and do it again and again and again until the turkey is defrosted.

Plan backwards from the time you need the turkey to be ready. See the grid below to plan:









So if you have a 22 pound turkey and you're not stuffing it, you'll need 4 - 4 1/2 hours for it to cook, and you'll want to leave a little time for the juices to settle. If you need to have it ready to eat by 5 pm, plan on taking it out of the oven at 4:30 - so plan on putting it in the oven at about 11:30 to be sure it's done in time.

Preheat the oven to 450, and then drop it to 350 when you put the turkey in. That makes for a nice brown skin.

To prep the turkey, first you'll need to take out the gizzards. These will be in a little plastic bag in the cavity of the bird. They might have also put the neck in the little hole on the other end of the turkey instead of with the other (smaller) gizzards (there should be a flap of skin covering the hole). If you want to use these to make a stock later (which is also really easy), put them in a ziploc and put them in the freezer. You might also find some twine in a little plastic baggie on the outside of the turkey wrapper - this is to make a little carrying case for the turkey, so you can transfer it to the serving plate from the pan. Keep that for later.

Get your roasting pan ready. If you have a pan with a rack, it would be a good idea to brush down the rack with some olive oil, so the skin doesn't stick. If you don't have a roasting pan, and are using a foil pan, put it on a baking sheet so that it's stable (the foil pan isn't stable enough on it's own).

At about 15 minutes before you need to put the turkey in the oven, get it out of the fridge (or water, if you're doing it that way and really let it drain). Take some paper towels and pat the skin dry. This will help you get a nice crispy skin (the more water on the bird, the less crispy it gets). Once the turkey is nice and dry, put it on the pan or rack, with the legs pointing up - that's breast side up. You'll want to take that twine that came with the bird and wrap it under and around the bird so that it forms a little carrier at this point - test it out to make sure it works. As well, if you have kitchen twine, wrap the legs together - that way, the inside will cook evenly (instead of letting all the heat out of the gaping hole) - if you're stuffing the turkey, stuff it before tying its legs together.

If you're stuffing the bird, you'll do it at this point. Make sure your stuffing is COOKED and COOLED. Putting uncooked stuffing in a turkey will make the stuffing cook, but it will also make the stuffing expand and you might end up with an exploding turkey. Putting warm stuffing in a turkey will just breed bacteria. Your best bet is to make your stuffing the day before, and to leave it in the fridge until you're ready to use it.

When you're stuffing your turkey, you want to make sure that whatever spoon you're putting inside the bird isn't touching your "clean" stuffing - that is, the stuffing that you'll serve alongside the turkey. So, use one spoon to move some stuffing into your "dirty" bowl, and then use another spoon to move it from a "dirty" bowl into the turkey. That way, you don't contaminate your "clean" stuffing.

Once that's all done, take some olive oil and brush it on the bird with a pastry brush. That will ensure a crispy skin. Try to get under the bird as well. Remember that anything that touches the bird should not be put back into an original container - so pour some olive oil into a small bowl and use that. Then, put some salt and whatever other seasoning you're using in a bowl. Take a half a lemon and mush it around in the spice mixture, and then use that to rub the bird. You want to get as much of the bird with this rub as possible, so keep putting the lemon back in the mixture until it's all covered. It doesn't have to be thick, but you want to make sure it's covered.

Then the turkey goes in the oven. Remember that it's preheated to 450, and you should drop it to 350 when you put the turkey in. You'll want to keep it uncovered until you get a nice brown skin. Once it's nice and brown, baste it, and then cover it with foil. That will make sure that all the moisture stays in. I usually baste every 20 minutes to half an hour, and just start at the top and let the liquid run down.

When you've got about a half hour to go, stick a meat thermometer in one of the thighs (that's the darkest part of the meat, which takes the longest to cook) and see what the temperature is. Make sure the thermometer doesn't touch the bone, as that will throw things off. The thigh should be around 180 - and that's when you'll want to take the turkey out, get it nice and covered, and let it sit to juice up some more.

And that's it! Easy, right?

For a roast chicken, you probably wouldn't stuff it, but you'd do everything else the same. Your roasting time would be cut to about 1-2 hours.