We like to have this delicious Golden Squash Soup with our meal:
It can be made the day before, so doesn’t get in the way of your Turkey Day cooking.
Interesting to find a bunch of folks here who don’t brine, and think it’s better that way. I agree, and I’ve always felt a little isolated. But I brined a chicken once and it came out sort of rubbery. I roast chicken nearly every week, and it always has moist tender fresh and a crispy skin (unless I get distracted and over cook it.) The brined one was much worse.
And yet, I know tons of people who swear by it for a tender bird.
My theory is that brining forces you to actually fully defrost the bird, and that’s the real benefit. Because a partially frozen bird will be partially overcooked and dry by the time the interior is hot enough.
Oh, and I’ve had good luck roasting fowl with the “start in a hot oven then turn the temp down to finish” method.
Interesting. That’s consistent with my results. I gave up basting years ago because it didn’t seem to make any difference.
So much this! I don’t even put it in a cooler, I leave it on the back of the stove, where it stays warm from other things cooking. It basically stays warm until I carve it. And it’s WAY better if it has adequate time to rest. I learned this tip by mistake, when my brother was two hours late for Thanksgiving dinner one year. We had the best turkey any of us have ever had. I’ve done it on purpose ever since.
Just wanted to report that my dry-brined, spatchcock-ish turkey was a gigantic hit for the second year in a row.
I took over the turkey-ing last year after having to eat some…rather disappointing turkey prepared by another 2 years ago.
This year my Mom emphasized that it’s pretty much required that after eating my turkey for 2 Thanksgivings, I’m in charge of the turkey from here on out 
I’ll happily take on that responsibility.
I got a mid-grade ham this year too, since the turkey was only 12 lbs. (I find it hard to fit a bigger one on a pan) and I didn’t want to run out of meat. Put it on indirect heat on the Weber with just a touch of smoke. That actually may have gone over better than the turkey!
T-giving afternoon, made lovelylovely turkey stock with the bones-and-bits. When I roasted the turkey, I laid celery and carrots across the sheet pan and set the turkey on them. Then they went in the stock pot. Now I have 2 nice containers of stock in the freezer for future soups.
Ham remaining on the bone got cut off and the bone went in to simmer all afternoon to make a gigantic pot of ham and beans yesterday. Mmmmmm.
Stop, you’re killing me! Would that be Navy pea-beans, by any chance?
Here’s the recipe I use for Thanksgiving sweet potatoes. One thing I like about it is that it’s not cloying sweet like so many other sweet potato dishes:
Sweet Potatoes with Three Kinds of Ginger
4 medium sweet potatoes or yams, peeled and cut into half-inch slices
2 tsp. grated fresh ginger
2 tsp. grated young ginger (if not available, double the amount of fresh ginger)
1 Tbsp. chopped candied ginger
1 cup heavy cream
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
Preheat the oven to 400 F.
Cover the bottom of a baking dish, Dutch oven, or casserole with a layer of sweet potatoes. Sprinkle with a bit of each of the three kinds of ginger. Add another layer of sweet potatoes and more ginger. Continue layering until the sweet potatoes have been used up. Mix the cream and soy sauce together and pour the mixture over the sweet potatoes. Cover and bake for 45 minutes, or until the sweet potatoes are tender.
A cornucopia of beans! 
Similar to this mix.
This thread is the fist time I’ve ever run into the term “spatchcocking”. I am an annoying know-it-all at heart, and always look askance – at least initially – at anything I think I should have or would have heard of, but somehow haven’t.
Is spatchcocking an old term/technique, or something that just kinda came out over the last 20 years or so as a food-preparation trend? Why isn’t the term really well known, like “roasting” or “basting”?
(I also remember when brining a turkey was The New Thing To Do circa the mid- to late-1990s, so I’m wondering if spatchcocking is like that. Anyone spatchcocking turkeys circa WWII? Did American Baby Boomers grow up with spatchcocked turkey for the holidays?)
Spatchcocked and dry brined with a 50/50 mix of kosher salt and Penzey’s Mural of Flavor with some fresh black pepper.
Leave it uncovered overnight in the fridge, wipe it off a little, smear on a stick of unsalted butter, throw it in at 400 until the breast hits 160. Perfect every time.
The most important thing you can do for breast meat, aside from not overcooking it, is to cut it right. Take the breast off the bone and cut it across the grain. It really does make a huge difference.
For gravy I got a couple of packages of turkey wings and legs, browned the hell out of them in the oven, and simmered them overnight with onions and garlic. I did this way ahead and just thickened and seasoned it the day of.
It’s similar to the cooking term “butterflying”, but Spatchcock is an Irish term that dates back to the late 18th century. Rumor has it, that the term is an abbreviation of “dispatch the cock”.
This Thanksgiving I cooked up a pretty stellar wet brined and spatchcocked turkey. Meat was delicious and perfectly moist, while ALL the skin was perfectly crispy (because on a spatchcocked bird, ALL the skin is on top, so it gets beautifully and awesomely crispy).
Everything else I served was traditional–mashed potatoes, gravy, cornbread stuffing, sweet potato casserole, HOWEVER, I breached tradition with the green beans. For some reason, I decided to try a new recipe, which called for soy sauce and hot red pepper. BAD IDEA. The spicy Asian flavored green beans, which might have been delicious if served with something else, did NOT pair well with the rest of the meal.
I also ended up buying a store bought pumpkin pie from Costco (I usually bake them myself, but ran out of time this year), and it was surprisingly delicious! I may never bake another pumpkin pie as long as live, since the store bought variety has apparently improved dramatically.
Coming in late to the party here, but brining = YES.
17 years back, just after we moved to this house, the Washington Post had an article on the topic. I tried their cider-brined turkey and it has been my go-to ever since. You actually do the brining in a plastic bag (per the recipe an oven baking bag, but special “ziploc”-style bags are sold as well). You have to put the bagged turkey in a pan of some sort in the fridge of course, since it’s nearly impossible to get it completely leakproof.
That particular recipe leads to a very, very dark bird, so I always tent with foil the first couple hours or it comes out looking burned. There are also always enough drippings that all I need to do for gravy is skim a bit of the fat off, strain it, and thicken it.
It’s quite forgiving re overcooking a bit, also, since the brine helps the meat retain so much moisture.
Oh - and the stock made from a turkey cooked with this recipe is the absolute best I’ve ever tasted. The spices are on the sweet side (ginger, cloves, allspice, plus bay leaves and peppercorns) which makes a huge difference. There’s a pot simmering on the stove right now (we had 2 turkeys - long story).
We are sort of traditionalists when it comes to the bird - we can spatchcock, deep fry or fly it to the moon, as long as it is seasoned minimally with some salt, some pepper and given a rub down with a stick of butter and roasted in a pan that has been given a preventive dump of basic flavor neutral homemade defatted chicken stock. We figure that we can screw with the sides and not ruin a meal but what if we end up with 22 pounds of pacific rim/australian aboriginal fusion turkey that everybody detests =)
I don’t brine because I like making broth from the carcass and bits (this usually includes the legs and wings). I like to reduce it until it jells when cooled. Broth from a brined turkey gets WAY too salty.
Time for my favorite (read: horrible) bean joke:
Why does Irish bean soup have no more than 239 beans? One more would make it too farty! 
Huh - I have NEVER found this to be a problem.
It may have something to do with how concentrated the brine is. The recipe i use has 14 cups (3 liters, roughly) of liquid, plus 2/3 cup of salt (plus 2/3 cup of sugar, and some spices).
I wasn’t the person brining, so I don’t know the concentration. I know he’s an Alton Brown fan.
IMHO, better than putting celery and carrots under your butterflied/spatchcocked turkey, put your stuffing there. That way it gets all the turkey juice flavor, cooks to a safe temperature at the same time (or slightly before) as the turkey, AND gets lots of crunchy soccorat bits combined with moister parts (while doing the job of keeping the turkey juices from burning). I filled a half-sheet pan with stuffing and put it under the butterflied turkey; halfway through cooking I removed the outlying portions of stuffing that weren’t directly under the turkey, as they were done, and let the rest keep soaking up turkey goodness. Perfect stuffing, perfect bird.
By the way, if anyone is butterfly/spatchcocked/flattened turkey-curious, you can do exactly the same thing to a chicken any day of the year and see if you like it, before risking a whole turkey on an unknown procedure.
Oooh boy. Oh boy oh boy oh boy. Is it Thanksgiving yet?!? That sounds amazing.
Yes, that’s the only way I do chickens as well. They are wonderful on the grill with indirect heat that way, too.