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Turkey for dinner
(Picture courtesy of cobalt123 at flickr.com.)
During the conversation yesterday at Pull Up A Chair, one of our FDL number asked a question that really needs an answer; how DO you cook the turkey?
First let me say that the first turkey I cooked, in my inexperience I never realized you have a bag of giblets in the turkey’s carcass. Do remove the giblets before cooking.
You should have a turkey by today if you’re using a frozen one, and put it into the refrigerator for thawing, because they take a few days to thaw completely.
For the dressing, I like whole wheat and grain rich breads, and you can buy those loaves now to begin drying out. Of course, you could buy bags of pre-prepared stuffing, but you’ll save a lot if you get bread from the day-old shelves or discount store for breads. Put the bread into a large container, cover with paper towels or any piece of cloth, in the refrigerator, about two days in advance.
The aluminum foil pans at the store now on sale for a dollar are perfectly good, but when you fix up your turkey, put that onto a firm cookie sheet to avoid its buckling under the weight of the cooked bird. Take all but the bottom rack out of the oven before turning it on, so you’ll have room for everything.
Cooking is going to take awhile, check the weight of your bird and see the chart below. Stuff the bird before putting in the pan, see recipe below for standard celery stuffing.
You should rinse the bird inside and out and pat dry with paper towels.
If you are stuffing the bird, stuff it loosely, allowing about ½ to ¾ cup stuffing per pound of turkey.
Brush the skin with melted butter or oil. Tie drumsticks together with string (for stuffed birds only).
Insert a meat thermometer into the thickest part of the thigh. The thermometer should point towards the body, and should not touch the bone.
Place the bird on a rack in a roasting pan, and into a preheated 350 degree F (175 degrees C) oven.
Weight of Bird |
Roasting Time (Unstuffed) |
Roasting Time(Stuffed) |
| 10 to 18 pounds |
|
3-3/4 to 4-1/2 hours |
| 18 to 22 pounds |
|
4-1/2 to 5 hours |
| 22 to 24 pounds |
|
5 to 5-1/2 hours |
| 24 to 29 pounds |
|
5-1/2 to 6-1/4 hours |
Cook the turkey until the skin is a light golden color, and then cover loosely with a foil tent. During the last 45 minutes of baking, remove the foil tent to brown the skin. Basting is not necessary, but will promote even browning.
The only true test for doneness is the temperature of the meat, not the color of the skin.
- The turkey is done when the thigh meat reaches an internal temperature of 180 degrees F. The dressing should be 165 F.
The dressing of course should be put into the turkey before the roasting.
- 1 (1 pound) loaf sliced white bread
- 3/4 cup butter or margarine
- 1 onion, chopped
- 4 stalks celery, chopped
- 2 teaspoons poultry seasoning
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 cup chicken broth
- cut into cubes.
-
- In a Dutch oven, melt butter or margarine over medium heat. Cook onion and celery until soft. Season with poultry seasoning, salt, and pepper. Stir in bread cubes until evenly coated. Moisten with chicken broth; mix well.
- Chill, and use as a stuffing for turkey, or bake in a buttered casserole dish at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 30 to 40 minutes.
- Enjoy your dinner.
- As you can see, the style of this post has been messed up because I’ve used a cut a paste that had pre-arranged numbering in it.
- This is one good reason to detest word processing, and for that reason I much prefer Wordperfect to any other program.
31 Comments
Couple of things I do differently:
1) Brine the turkey. The last day of that slow defrost in the fridge put the turkey in a stock pot to which you have added water salt and sugar. I don’t use as much water and sugar as the folks at America’s Test Kitchen, but even a weak brine makes a HUGE difference in both flavor and texture.
2) When doing a whole Turkey, I cook it low and slow at 225, overnight. The only real probelm with this is the house REALLY smells like turkey cooking and you have weird dreams. I put it in around 11pm midnight just before going to bed. The bird cooks evenly and is perfectly moist with crackled skin that looks like you laquered it.
It has that falling off the bone quality.
3)Cornbread stuffing, gotta be cornbread with celery, oinon, sage sausage and apple.
The next day: Cold turkey and stuffing sandwiches with lettuce and garlic mayo on italian bread=heaven
Correction : I don’t use as much SALT and Sugar as the folks at America’s Test Kitchen. You need enough water to cover
Excellent suggestions, thank you. The slow cooking is particularly nice, though hoping for cool weather.
My “gourmet cook” daughter-in-law makes wonderful soup, and begins it as she’s cleaning up from dinner. Not only the carcass (with a little meat still on it) goes into her enormous stock pot, but also stuffing, potatoes, gravy, and depending on the choice, even the remaining veggies from dinner. This cooks low and slow overnight, then she removes the carcass and adds a variety of herbs. It makes a wonderful, porridge-like soup. I have no idea what herbs she uses, and I suspect they vary from one time to the next, a little of this, some of that.
Sounds luscious, and the stuffing is croutons in original form, seems like.
LMAO! I did the same thing.
I like to stuff the bird, but the pros really try to say not to stuff it due to the salmonella prospect. I have never had a problem, but with the enormous amount of production all at once, it seems like it is worth thinking about.
I go with Cynthia on brining. I get a five gallon plastic pail and make a plastic garbage bag liner, add the brine and bird to the bag, keep it in the garage during the process. But the garage has been at 7000 feet, and it is cold. I have added liquor, lemons, various things to the brine. I don’t think my palate is sensitive enough to really discern the ingredients, but brining never fails to give a moist end product, IMO. I would try Cynthia’s low roast temp too.
One year I made anise ice cream for dessert. I think for my father’s last Thanksgiving, he liked licorice.
Oh, and being from NM, I like to make bluecorn bread stuffing, and I add pepitos (pumpkin seeds), green chile, cardamom, sometimes pine nuts, onion, and maybe some apples for moisture.
Oh, good, I felt like the world’s greatest dunce.
It only takes once, in my experience. lol
Somehow, long cooking always has meant to me that the salmonella threat is taken out, but I could be wrong.
Elsewhere, a friend told me that current advice is not to rinse off the bird, as that might spread problems and the processors don’t leave on feathers and stuff the way they used to, but I am just passing this on, do not know for sure.
I did too but I feel much better now. :)
There is usually loose gunk and globs of fat especially inside the bird, and washing is the best way to get rid of it, so I would definitely rinse it, even if you don’t brine the turkey. But I agree that brining produces a nice moist turkey.
I always have. As usual, there are two ways of looking at almost anything, but I do think the long cooking makes me trust things like stuffing the bird, and rinsing it, as long as the thermometer reaches the right degree of hot.
The brine is something I never have done, but since you mention it, I’d consider putting in spices like the mulling sort, with fruit. Of course, since my family isn’t around much at holidays, I don’t know when I’m going to try this out.
I am sure you could experiment with a chicken!
yes, good idea!
Now that’s a very good thought. I always pick up a whole chicken when they’re at rock bottom prices, which happens around Thanksgiving, might just do the brining number too. Thanks!
Since I know I will never run into anyone on here that ‘harvest’ their turkey, either wild or farm raised, I want to point out one little thing.
Curing foul by hanging it by the tail for 3 days to a week, depending on the temperature, is about the best bird you may ever eat. Ducks and geese, pheasants and turkeys. Thanks for this post Ruth. It’s one thing to have grandmas recipe in hand and quite another to run with it.
I think a chicken would be easy to infuse with flavors, much more agreeable by size, a turkey is a big bird to flavor. Glad this idea seems to be a good one. I am mostly vegetarian, but I have made the exception of turkey for TG, once a year, and I do occasionally eat fish or chicken, mostly when dining out. Sometimes I get a roasted chicken for the cats, and I eat a little of it, but I do worry about all the stuff they put in the production processing of our foods. So I don’t buy much flesh, organic is cost prohibitive for the most part.
Hi Ruth!
Ok, here is the short version:
I want to have Thanksgiving at my home this year for my daughter and mother (she’s ninety and really doesn’t cook much these days), but, alas, as I have previously suggested, cooking is definitely not my forte.
So to make a short story long, if I go to one of the many businesses offering a prepared, take-away thanksgiving menu, what are your thoughts about avoiding the dangerous shoals of prepared Thanksgiving foods, specifically concentrating on how to distinguish between the good ones and those which are not?
I’m really not up to poisoning my family, Help!
And of course, thanks for your diary(-ies).
That is what I hear, but honestly have never had it that way. I’m counting on you to introduce me to this variety of preparation.
If you can raise your own, or find some one who will raise them for you, this could be a better way, but probably costly, too.
Here, we have some restaurants that will do Thanksgiving and other holiday meals to order, and you can ask for more or less seasoning. The grocery stores also do the same, and they have organic sections as well. Roasting a turkey is not a big deal, and you’d be surprised how little work is involved if you do it yourself, I think. On occasion, when my children were little and no family was nearby, we went out for a big buffet somewhere, and if you check I think you’ll find that’s out there too. And in that case, you don’t have to clean up later.
Thanks, Ruth:
I’ll look around and see who’s offering what this year.
Somehow, I’d rather bring something in and do the clean-up.
It would seem more like the good old days.
Again, thanks.
Thank you, Ruth and others. This is exactly the sort of information I need.
Good, I’m glad to hear that, and only left because I had a trip pending when you asked yesterday. We are all more or less experienced at doing these operations, and happy if we can help at all.
I am not much of a meat preparer, and I’ll just say that I have never had any trouble with a brined turkey. They are about as easy as anything, and if you get a small turkey, thinking you are only feeding a small group, I don’t think it will be difficult. You can read all about it, lots of sites talk about brining, and I think you can do it. If I can do it, you can, I am sure.
Anyone here planning to do Beer Can Turkey? I’ve done Beer Can Chicken* several times, but I’d have to get a really small turkey to do BCT in my oven.
*For Beer Can Chicken: Set oven to 350F, rub chicken inside and out with olive oil and sea/kosher salt, put rosemary/sage/whatever in partially-filled lager beer can, slide can up into the large cavity between the chicken’s legs so the base of the can forms a tripod with the legs, place on large roasting pan and set in lowest rack of oven for 75 to 90 minutes. Result: Nice crispy skin all around and the breast fat drips down for a self-basting effect, keeping the white meat moist and flavorful even as the skin crisps and browns.
You’ll need to drain one of those forty oz beer cans, PW. ;-)
I’ve never done that, but hear it’s wonderful. Let us know how it turns out!