Roasting a Turkey without tin foil..

A turkey is a big bird and turning is a bit of a trick. Most people need silicone oven gloves, mitts they'll wash later, lots of paper towels, or .... At any rate, have a strategy for turning a big bird. It ain't a chicken.

Also, for heaven's sake, if you're going to turn, you must truss. Trussing a turkey means three bands of twine. Tie the legs together. Bend the wing tips and twist the wings behind the bird, then truss them. Finally, truss the the thighs so they stay close to the bird.

The turning method works best with a medium or small bird. Try and stay under 18# or so. The size also seems to work well for keeping the time down when cooking at "normal" temperatures. Controlling time is very important to you, so as neither to dessicate the breast meat, nor turn the skin to leather.

Not dumb. Do it. Or better still, inject the breasts and thighs.

When you get the turkey breast side up, "bard" by covering with strips of bacon.

When you remove the turkey to rest it (at least 20 minutes!), you can finish rendering the bacon in a frying pan until crisp; use the fat for the roux for your gravy, and crumble the crisp bacon itself into the stuffing.

All of this will work best with a brined turkey. You can brine your own (which is best), or buy quality pre-brined turkeys -- just not at the super market -- not only from specialty stores but from Trader Joes of all places! Another strategy is kosher. Kosher birds are treated with a lot of salt as part of the koshering process -- and although they're not brined, they act that way. Brined or not, most supermarket turkeys can't compete with birds which have been raised and processed appropriately. Worth the extra money.

All of that said, for the past several years we've smoked all of our holiday turkeys and due to popular demant it seems as though the tradition will continue indefinitely. IMO, smoking is the simplest and surest way to wonderful turkey.

BDL

WhySoDifficult said:

salt and pepper cavities-stuff loosely if stuffing

start with foil tent and remove for last hour if under browned

Cook turkey at 325 degrees follow standard internal temp guides for thigh, breast and or stuffing

STOP OPENING OVEN AND PEEKING AND WORRYING-A TURKEY IS ONE OF EASIEST THING TO COOK CORRECTLY AND WELL. NONE OF THIS TRUSSING AND TURNING CRAP. ENJOY YOUR FAMILY AND GUESTS!!!

J.

Click to expand...

WOW this IS an old thread.

It's hard to break family traditions and ways of cooking the bird.

The reality of this now-a-days is that in order to get the dark meat cooked through, the breast meat is sacrificed.

We stuff the bird, cover it with foil and forget about it for a few hours, then lift off the tent and place the already overcooked bird back in the oven to brown it.

Same old story year after years after year.

To separate the breast from the rest of the bird to cook and make the stuffing in a casserole dish takes all the fun out of the holiday., but insures a better product.

Turkeys are bred for their big white meat breasts.

The males are so big that they can not stand up because their breast are so heavy.

The hens must be artificially inseminated because the boys just can't do the nasty.

Such great pains are taken to insure that beautiful white succulent breast is proper and we go and cook the heck out it.

Even the cook books still have the same old techniques for cooking the bird.

It has been and will always be to cook by temperature and NOT by time.

The 18-20 minutes per pound guideline is simply just that.

Cook book authors must give the cook a standard by which to calculate cooking time but that it is merely their thoughts, and their recipe technique.

Only experience can teach.

Some people have been cooking there Thanksgiving bird for more than 50 years the same old way and never thought about any other ways.

Chefross said:

WOW this IS an old thread.

It's hard to break family traditions and ways of cooking the bird.

The reality of this now-a-days is that in order to get the dark meat cooked through, the breast meat is sacrificed.

We stuff the bird, cover it with foil and forget about it for a few hours, then lift off the tent and place the already overcooked bird back in the oven to brown it.

Same old story year after years after year.

To separate the breast from the rest of the bird to cook and make the stuffing in a casserole dish takes all the fun out of the holiday., but insures a better product.

Turkeys are bred for their big white meat breasts.

The males are so big that they can not stand up because their breast are so heavy.

The hens must be artificially inseminated because the boys just can't do the nasty.

Such great pains are taken to insure that beautiful white succulent breast is proper and we go and cook the heck out it.

Even the cook books still have the same old techniques for cooking the bird.

It has been and will always be to cook by temperature and NOT by time.

The 18-20 minutes per pound guideline is simply just that.

Cook book authors must give the cook a standard by which to calculate cooking time but that it is merely their thoughts, and their recipe technique.

Only experience can teach.

Some people have been cooking there Thanksgiving bird for more than 50 years the same old way and never thought about any othe

Click to expand...

An old thread indeed!

How does separating the bird and putting the stuffing in a different pan take "all the fun" out of a holiday? I mean, only one person is doing the cooking of that, and really, how much fun is it to sit and shove goop up a bird's bum? I've never done it so I can' attest to how much "fun" this is. I don't want to start a stuffing war or anything, but I've eaten a lot of stuffed turkeys and the thing they all have in common is that they are all dry and overcooked. And the stuffing is mush. Even as a kid I couldn't find the fun in that and my mother did it every year. It's probably why I avoided the turkey and stuffing altogether for years. When there's a lot of people present nobody notices that you skip it. It's much harder to pass on turkey and stuffing at small gatherings though.

But ever since I attended other Tday dinners and have seen how wonderful stuffing can be when it is roasted separately (soft bits and brown bits and crunchy bits too) I have understood the pleasures of stuffing. And consequently the pleasures of turkey that is not dried out. In fact I have a lot of fun on Tday now that I have figured all this out. But the stuffing wars continue although there is simply no way to stuff a bird and have it come out well, no possible way. In order to safely cook said stuffing the deep core of it must reach a temperature of 165F. That means that the outside of the bird (the part that we eat) must be so overly overcooked that it's beyond redemption.

I have always said that tradition is to be reevaluated. I've never held on to too many traditions. A few things here and there but when it comes to food you don't have to do the same thing over and over and over again. I don't care how hung up people get on their mother's cranberry sauce. When I do a holiday you don't know what to expect. If I was doing Tday one year I'd do an Italian style Thanksgiving, the following year a New Orlean's Style, and so on. There are simply too many creative ways to do something to be tied to one.