Mom's
Roast
Turkey Recipe
Preparation time: About 5 hours.
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.
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 to 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 cavity
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.
 
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 over the bird over so that the breast is
on top, and put the broiler on 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, a half hour before the turkey should be
done. The dark meat in the thigh should be about 175°F. The white meat
in the breast should be 160°F to 165°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. (See Epicurious
video
on carving a turkey or Alton
Brown
video on how to carve a turkey.)
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