Whole Turkey

There are two key points to roasting a delicious Thanksgiving turkey that everyone talks about and always seem to get wrong:

1. Bigger is better
2. The breast meat needs the most attention so it stays firm and moist

Smaller is better

The best bird is a 14-18 pound young turkey. This turkey fits best in your average roasting pan and cooks more evenly than larger birds. It’s also easier to brine, carve, and stays firmer. A mature male wild turkey reaches a maximum weight of 18.8 lbs (National Geographic) but the turkeys we eat today weigh twice as much as they did a few decades ago. This comes at the cost of flavor, nutrition, and animal welfare. A young turkey is also not as gamey as its older siblings which makes the dark meat much more palatable, bringing me to my next point.

The dark meat is not only the best part but also how you know its done properly

Every turkey package says to check the temperature of a roasting turkey by probing the meatiest part of the thigh. This is true. That part of the turkey is the furthest from the heat source in a conventional oven. Because of this, the breast meat will always reach a higher temperature than the dark meat. This can only be avoided by spatchcocking the turkey, which is a good method for cooking, provided you have a large enough roasting pan and confidence in your butchering skills.

Unfortunately, this means that if you are roasting a whole turkey in a pan, there is no way to avoid the breast meat being slightly less than perfect. This is especially true with factory farmed turkeys that seem to have a bit of a stringy texture in the tenderloins. So don’t worry about the breast meat being perfect. It will still be delicious and your guests may still say it’s the best turkey breast they’ve ever had!

Step 1: Preparing for Wet Brining

Assuming you’ve already picked out your 14-18 pound turkey, you need to make sure it’s completely thawed before you can roast it. Not everyone buys a frozen turkey but it can still be quite delicious when prepared right. 24 hours before it has completely thawed, the turkey can be brined. To wet brine the turkey you will need two bags of ice from the grocery store and a pound of salt, and you will need to time it properly so that you brine it for at least 36 hours before roasting. You will also need a space to put the turkey, and a container in which the turkey will actually fit. Few will have space in their refrigerator, so preferably in a garage away from pets, or possibly outside. I once brined a turkey in a 6-quart enameled cast iron pot outside in 38 degree weather, and I brined the recent turkey in a 16 quart stockpot I found thrift shopping. Anything with room for the turkey and half a bag of ice will work.

Step 2: Brining

The goldilocks zone for wet brining is 36-48 hours. It tends to add pink “smoke rings” to the turkey and adds enough salt flavor that salting the bird during roasting is not necessary. This is probably dependent on the salt content and the temperature of the brine, so you’re better off following guidelines here. I swear by salt, water, and ice only. Many recipes call for sugar, citrus, even adding bay leaves to the brine. Think scientifically for a second: you’re putting a complex cell-based protein-water-lipid object in a fluid and exploiting the naturally low salinity of the cells to force a higher salinity solution into the cells. Through osmosis, the turkey cells will absorb additional water and salt. The amount of salt it absorbs therefore must be minimal since it is the average of the brine and the turkey cells. Adding additional spices, sugar, and citrus is a waste since you have to use copius amounts of them to increase their concentration in the brine enough to be absorbed meaningfully into the turkey cells. I have tried many variations of this recipe: the acids in citrus precooks the outside of the turkey, and nothing else adds any flavor. Sugar does slightly, but it also corrupts the protein-rich healthy meal you would be eating, and causes charcoal burn in the drippings that ruins the gravy.

Brine Formula:

Add a gallon or so of water to the container.

Add 1/2 oz salt for every 16 oz of turkey. Stir until the salt is mostly dissolved.

Add the turkey, then top with half a bag of ice.

Fill the container with more water, pouring over the ice until the turkey is just submerged.

Now you will need to watch the temperature of the water and keep it under 40 degrees Fahrenheit for the 36-48 hour brining time. Kept in a cool area, you shouldn’t need to add ice more than every 8 hours.

Step 3: Roasting

Once the turkey is finished brining, you can pour out the contents of the brine and remove the turkey. Place the turkey in the pan you intend to roast it in. Pat the skin dry with a clean cloth towel (not a paper towel, unless you want paper fragments all over your bird!). Don’t forget to wash this towel soon afterwards.

No preparation is necessary beyond this point. Your turkey will be delicious, if only slightly cured by the brining process. There are ways to improve flavor, however:

1. Melt a stick of butter and brush it over the skin, getting in all the nooks and crannies of the bird. Let the rest of the butter drip into the pan.
2. Chop fresh sage, rosemary, and thyme. Sprinkle it all over the bird, letting it cling to the butter.
3. Crack pepper over the top of the bird giving it a peppered look. Just enough to boost the aroma, however the pepper flavor will be inconsequential to the meat.
4. Instead of bread stuffing, peel an entire button (or two) of garlic and lay the cloves gently in the cavity. Add sprigs of rosemary and thyme. This will make the house smell delicious and the meat will absorb the garlic flavor without it being overpowering.

Now comes the crazy part: set the oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit on the conventional/standard setting (NOT convection).

I know, right?

You’re going to do the Alton Brown breastplate method explained here in a quick 2 minute video. If you see the skin of the breast over-browning or the herbs changing color, throw on that breastplate. Then reduce the oven to 300 degrees, rotate the bird in the oven, and roast until the internal temperature of the thigh reaches 165 degrees. Insert the probe between the thigh and the breast near the leg joint, piercing the bridge of skin that probably collected a lot of butter in that 30 minutes. You can do this with a basic probe instead of an electric one. Wait at least 15 minutes between checking until you are at 155 degrees.

The total cook time for a bird using this method is between 2.5 and 3 hours. It will be more if you add stuffing. And like Alton said, stuffing is evil. If you really need it, making it separately is always preferable and will result in a better bird. Don’t be a bird brain.

Step 4: Resting

Never skimp on the rest period. You should wait at least 30 minutes for the turkey to finish cooking and cool down to temperature that is safer for carving. During that time, there are many things you can do in the kitchen. Most notably is gravy.

Step 5: Gravy

Gravy is a myth created in an alternate universe by aliens to enslave humanity. Real gravy has never been tried.

Just kidding.

The truth is that “gravy” is pretty bastardized compared to what it should be. You’re taking the delicious drippings of the pan that is already herbed and fatted and perfect and adding a shitty ingredient like aLl PuRpOsE fLoUr to all of your hard work. Stop kidding yourself. Gravy sucks. You know what’s better than gravy? Straight drippings from that browned butter pan roasted turkey you just made. But there is something you can do to enhance the flavor a bit. Here’s the recipe for real gravy:

1. Use a spoon to remove those cloves of roasted garlic from the cavity of the turkey and place them into a stainless steel pot. They’ll probably fall apart.
2. Add just enough turkey drippings to cover the bottom of the stainless steel pot. Heat on medium.
3. Bring the pot just to a simmer. Stir and add drippings as needed.
4. Deglaze with white wine. Personally, I prefer an oaked chardonnay for this step, and I’m usually serving one at Thanksgiving anyways.
5. Bring it back to a simmer. Deglaze as many more times as you want.
6. Add the rest of the drippings and bring to a boil. Leave the fat in.
7. Once cooled, add to the gravy boat.

The rich end product will be such a delicacy at the table. If you must add a starch to cut the richness and thicken the texture, you can make a separate container that blends potato in it to make a sauce. Even blending in some mashed potato would be better than nasty flour.

Once you serve this turkey on your Thanksgiving table, you can never go back.