Mom’s Roast Turkey
Recipe
INGREDIENTS
1 turkey, approx. 15 lbs.*
Juice of a lemon
Salt and pepper
Olive oil or melted butter
1/2 yellow onion, peeled and quartered
Tops and bottoms of a bunch of celery
2 carrots
Parsley
Sprigs of fresh rosemary, thyme
* Need help figuring out how big a turkey to get?
Butterball has a turkey calculator that helps you
figure out just how many pounds you need. In
general, plan for:
12-15 lb turkey for 10-12 people
15-18 lb turkey for 14-16 people
18-22 lb turkey for 20-22 people
METHOD
1 To start, if the turkey has been refrigerated,
bring it to room temperature before cooking.
Keep it in its plastic wrapping until you are
ready to cook it. While in the refrigerator, and or
while you are bringing it to room temp, have the
bird resting in a pan, so that if the plastic
covering leaks for any reason, you are confining
the juices to the pan. If you get a frozen turkey,
you will need to defrost it in the refrigerator for
several days first. Allow approximately 5 hours
of defrosting for every pound. So, if you have a
15 pound turkey, it will take about 75 hours to
defrost it in the refrigerator, or around 3 days.
Handle a raw turkey with the same amount of
caution as when you handle raw chicken - use a
separate cutting board and utensils to avoid
contaminating other foods. Wash you hands
with soap before touching anything else in the
kitchen. Use paper towels to clean up.
Remove the neck and giblets (heart,
gizzard, liver). Use the heart and gizzard
for making stock for the stuffing. The neck
can be cooked along side the turkey or
saved for turkey soup. Or all of the giblets
can be used for making giblet gravy.
Note that if your turkey comes with a plastic piece holding the legs together, check
the instructions on the turkey's package. Most likely you do not need to remove
those plastic ties for cooking (unless you plan to cook your turkey at a very high
temperature). If you remove the plastic ties, you will need to use kitchen string to tie
the legs together.
2 Preheat the oven
400 degrees F.
3 Wash out the turkey with water. Pull out any
remaining feather stubs in the turkey skin. Pat
the turkey dry with paper towels. Lather the
inside of the cavity with the juice of half a
lemon. Take a small handful of salt and rub all
over the inside of the turkey.
4 In this method of cooking a turkey, we don't
make the stuffing in the turkey because doing
so adds too much to the cooking time. For
flavor, put in inside the turkey a half a yellow
onion, peeled and quartered, a bunch of parsley,
a couple of carrots, and some tops and bottoms
of celery. You may need to cap the body cavity
with some aluminum foil so that the stuffing
doesn't easily fall out. Close up the turkey cavityr
with either string (not nylon string!) or metal
skewers. Make sure that the turkey's legs are
tied together, held close to the body, and tie a
string around the turkey body to hold the wings
in close. (Here's a good video on trussing: how
to truss a turkey.)
The neck cavity can be stuffed with parsley and
tied closed with thin skewers and string.
5 Rub either melted butter or olive oil all over
the outside of the turkey. Sprinkle salt
generously all over the outside of the turkey (or
have had it soaking in salt-water brine before
starting this process). Sprinkle pepper over the
turkey.
6 Place turkey BREAST DOWN on the
bottom of a rack over a sturdy roasting
pan big enough to catch all the drippings.
This is the main difference between the
way mom makes turkey and everyone
else. Cooking the turkey breast down
means the skin over the breast will not get
so brown. However, all of the juices from
the cooking turkey will fall down into the breast while cooking. And the resulting
bird will have the most succulent turkey breast imaginable.
Add several sprigs of fresh (if possible) thyme
and rosemary to the outside of the turkey.
7 Chop up the turkey giblets (gizzard, heart). Put
into a small saucepan, cover with water, add
salt. Bring to simmer for an hour or so to help
make stock for the stuffing (see stuffing recipe).
8 Put the turkey in the oven. Check the cooking
directions on the turkey packaging. Gourmet
turkeys often don't take as long to cook. With
the turkeys mom gets, she recommends
cooking time of about 15 minutes for every
pound. For the 15 lb turkey, start the cooking at
400 F for the first 1/2 hour. Then reduce the
heat to 350 F for the next 2 hours. Then reduce
the heat further to 225 F for the next hour to
hour and a half.
If you want the breast to be browned as well,
you can turn the bird over so that the breast is
on top, and put it in a 500°F oven or under the
broiler for 4-5 minutes, just enough to brown
the breast. Note that if you do this, you will have
a higher risk of overcooking the turkey breast.
Start taking temperature readings with a meat
thermometer, inserted deep into the thickest
part of the turkey breast and thigh, an hour
before the turkey should be done. You want a
resulting temperature of 175°F for the dark meat
(thighs and legs) and 165°F for the white meat
(breast). The temperature of the bird will
continue to rise once you take it out of the oven,
so take it out when the temperature reading for
the thigh is 170°F, and for the breast 160°F. If
you don't have a meat thermometer, spear the
breast with a knife. The turkey juices should be
clear, not pink.
9 Once you remove the turkey from the oven, let
it rest for 15-20 minutes. Turn the turkey breast
side up to carve it.