Cooking a Turkey

This year I followed a video tutorial on how to prepare and cook the Thanksgiving turkey and what they said to do was not how I have always cooked a holiday turkey. Not at all.

What was so different?

I dry brined it several days in advance. 

You let the bird thaw out for several days in the refrigerator and then, when it is no longer frozen you rub it all over with salt and herbs and let it sit for another two days, uncovered, in the refrigerator. It dries out the skin but juices up the meat.

The sight of a naked plucked uncovered bird dripping juices in my refrigerator for days was . . . . off putting, but you need the skin to really dry out.

The cooking times were alarming. 

I always put the turkey in the oven at 325° and let it slowly cook. But no, after letting the bird sit out to get to room temperature for an hour, you are supposed to start it in the oven at 450°. Really, 450 degrees. 

It's just for half an hour to brown that nice salt dried skin. Then you cook it at 325° for the remaining several hours.

No basting.

Apparently that slows down the cooking and with the dry brine you want the skin crispy and the meat moist. You don't want to wet the skin.

I got an instant read thermometer.

I had an old one but it had a thick sensor stem that made a hole in the meat and it took a while to register and was hard to read. I always took the bird out when it got to  165° and let it sit for maybe 10 minutes and then carved.

But you take it out at 155° and let it sit for 30 minutes to an hour (!) while it continues up to 165° and only then do you carve it.

This is the new thermometer I got and it worked so much better:

Thermoworks Thermopop 2

And how did it come out? Fantastic. The whole meal was fantastic, the visit with my son was wonderful and calls with other far away family were great and I'm going to always do the turkey this way in the future.