We do the bag thing as well, and it works out well for us.
We generally butter the entire bird, and season it with salt, pepper, and a small bit of garlic, but before we put it in the bag, we load the bag up with onion, carrot, sweet peppers, and celery to form kind of a natural rack for it to sit on. Apples can be added to this as well if you want a little bit of sweet. We then insert the bird breast up (with stuffing inside) making sure to tuck various bits of the veggies wherever they will stick on top. Lastly, we pour in about 16 oz. of chicken stock (or broth). Having this moisture, along with the bag, eliminates the need to baste.
Another trick that we use is to preheat the oven to 450, and upon inserting the bird into the oven, we reduce it down to the recommended temp. This helps sear the outside a little bit.
A simple honey brine – the rule of thumb is one cup of salt per gallon of water. I throw in a cup of honey as well and some black peppercorns. You can also add herbs or citrus, but I usually don’t bother.
Deep fried turkey is AWESOME. With the cost of peanut oil, I don’t think it’s worth it to cook just one. Back when my brother’s bar was still open, we’d spend the whole day cooking 10 or so of them.
I see no problem with the bird falling apart. Makes it easier to carve, and easier to take the meat off later for turkey soup.
Another roast in the bag with celery and onions in the cavity. The breast meat is dry sometimes, but that’s what the gravy is for, and I make excellent turkey gravy.
By the way, turkeys today generally don’t need to be basted, and basting won’t help the juiciness of the bird as once it starts browning, it only helps the skin brown up more. Having said that, keeping a piece of cheesecloth on the breast and basting that periodically will slow down the rate of cooking of the white meat, which is a good thing.
Even though there are only two of us in the house, we buy the biggest turkey we can find - at least 25 pounds, but the bigger the better.
Why?
First of all, cheap. Secondly, same amount of work to make a small turkey as a large turkey. Thirdly, we freeze what remains - in numerous small containers - to defrost and eat again over the coming weeks/month.
We also have some Christmas dishes that require turkey. Check the Butterball website for recipes and there is one for Turkey Tortellini Soup that is spectacular! We make it every Christmas Day.
As far as preparing? Simple.
Clean it, maybe rub with butter or a little oil, salt and pepper, no stuffing, put it on rack in pan, place in oven and set timer. I believe it is about 15 - 20 minutes per pound.
Never open oven door.
Do not baste.
When timer beeps, open oven door and remove.
Allow about 20 minutes to cool before slicing.
Doesn’t get any easier than that, and have never had a turkey come out dry or undercooked or bad in any way.
Deep fried turkey is AWESOME. With the cost of peanut oil, I don’t think it’s worth it to cook just one. Back when my brother’s bar was still open, we’d spend the whole day cooking 10 or so of them.
All you bird flippers, read the following, you will lean how to do a bird perfectly without flipping
I use Alton Brown’s brine and recipe with a few changes. First off I brine the bird for 24 hours not the 6 or so he suggests. I pull it out of the brine 24 hours before I am gong to cook it. Rinse it off and put it uncovered back in the fridge. This will allow the skin to dry out just a bit and it will turn out crispier. Now for how to cook the bird and not have the breast dry out
The breast is done when the temp is 161F. The thigh is done at 180F so if both parts of the turkey start at the same temp the breast will get dried out when the thigh is done.
The secret is you want the breast to start out colder than the thighs. So on T day take the bird out about 3 hours before you want to put it on. Set it on a counter to warm up. Go fill a 1 gallon zip lock bag full of ice. Place the ice on the breast. When you go to put this bad boy on the heat, the breast will be at least 20 degrees colder than the thighs. They will both be done at the same time. Remove the bag of ice BEFORE you put the bird on the heat.
Way way easier to put a bag of ice on the bird for a few hours than it is to flip a 22lb bird that is hotter than hell. End of secret cooking method
I do mine on a charcoal grill usually with apple wood, or sometime mesquite.
For years, when I opened my home for our annual “Orphans Thanksgiving,” we would smoke our turkey in a Weber kettle. It always came out juicy, and with a great smokey flavor. The actual flavor was affected by the wood we would choose, and we tended towards the sweeter woods (fruits, etc.). Smoking also provides for some amazingly flavorful gravy.
The benefits of smoking a turkey are manyfold, but primarily it frees the oven for other holiday baking needs (stuffing, sweet potatoes, casserole, etc.). We also found that it tended to cook more quickly over the coals, as determined by digital thermometers.
I often tell people that if they do one turkey on a Weber they will never use an oven again for this task.
I still use my Weber or my egg for every turkey.
Yo, all you non-flipping bird-cookers, your way sounds lovely. Really. It also sounds like a massive pain in the ass and more time-consuming than I have any intention of dealing with when I’m also trying to organize 5 other dishes, house cleaning, table setting and general organizing.
I see absolutely, positively no reason whatsoever to go to so much trouble and so many steps when the simple method of cooking the bird unstuffed, upside down, then turning it over to brown the breast skin during the last 20 minutes, makes an absolutely amazingly delicious, juicy, incredible bird that every single person begs for the recipe for before they leave, and anyone who ever tries this method, swears they’ll never cook a turkey any other way as long as they live.
:dubious:
How feaking hard is it to leave the bird sitting on the counter with a bag of ice on it?
If you consider this to be too much work, perhaps you should just order in.
ETA: To me flipping a 160 degree 20 lb bird in the face of 350 degree heat sound like a recipe for disaster and much harder than leaving a bag of ice sitting on top of a bird for an hour or so, but YMMV
I’ve posted my brine recipe here before (well, the one I use, I did NOT develop the recipe myself) and the drippings are what I’d say “just salty enough”.
I do brine - for 24-36 hours beforehand. Then I simply dump out the brine, plop that bird onto a roasting rack in a roasting pan, and stick it in the oven at 325 for what seems like an obscenely long time (the meat thermometer reads quite high). The meat is moist all the way through, and there are so many drippings that I just pour em through my defatting thingy (measuring cup where the spout comes out from the bottom - you pour out the nonfat juices while the fat stays mostly in the cup). Then I deglaze the pain with a little water. Pour that plus the drippings through a sieve to get out the burnt bits, and thicken with a bit of flour. BEST GRAVY EVAH.
I can see that with a higher-salt brine, the drippings would be inedible.
