Baking a Turkey

[Barb Bouldrey]

I found a letter written by my grandmother the first year I was married...1969. She gives me instructions on how to bake a turkey.

Bake a turkey 1/2 hour for every pound.

WHAT???? She would bake a 20 pound turkey for 10 hours. She would baste it every 30 minutes.

I remember that she got up at 5 a.m. to put the turkey in the oven. Poor lady.

I don't remember the turkey being dry, so the basting must have been the secret.

I use the turkey baking bag and bake a 20 pound turkey in 3 1/2 hours....well, the bag and oven do the baking. I love it. Easy work. Easy clean up. Moist turkey.

My brother, in Northern Ohio, grills his turkey on his grill outside.

Barb

[Joel Merrill]

About 20 years ago I made friends with a lady in her mid 80's. She had taught college home economics and had experiments with the first microwave ovens back in the 50's. One day we were talking and I said I didn't like turkey because it was so dry and chewy. She said what makes turkey so dry is cooking it so long. She told me to lay 2 sheets of heavy duty aluminum foil, side by side, shinny side up. Then you attach them with a sheet metal seem that I could show you but I can't explain :basic04. That way you have one big sheet. Then you wrap up the turkey in it and seal it tightly. Then you bake it at twice the temperature for half the time :eek: You open up the foil the last half hour to brown the turkey. I tried it and it worked great :). We had my folks over that year and of course it was my mom's turkey that was always dry and over cooked. My dad just pigged out. He ate like he was starving and saying over and over how good that turkey was. Now my mom is a sweet mild mannered person. I have never seen her mad or even raise her voice. She didn't say anything but she was noticeably upset with Dad. I have never seen her like that before :basic05. I have done the turkey like that every year since except last year. Last year my son-in-law wanted to deep fat fry one. I had eaten one like that once and it was very good so we tried it. We way over cooked it. The breast was okay yet the the rest was fried to a crisp. Oh well, it was our first time.

Joel

[Diane Likens]

Last year my son-in-law wanted to deep fat fry one. I had eaten one like that once and it was very good so we tried it. We way over cooked it. The breast was okay yet the the rest was fried to a crisp. Oh well, it was our first time.

Joel
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I've had great success deep frying for 3 minutes per pound plus 4 minutes overall. So a 20-pound turkey would be 64 minutes. I use an injectable butter and garlic marinade. EXCELLENT!

[Doug Kitchen]

I found a letter written by my grandmother the first year I was married...1969. She gives me instructions on how to bake a turkey.

Bake a turkey 1/2 hour for every pound.

WHAT???? She would bake a 20 pound turkey for 10 hours. She would baste it every 30 minutes.

I remember that she got up at 5 a.m. to put the turkey in the oven. Poor lady.

I don't remember the turkey being dry, so the basting must have been the secret.

I use the turkey baking bag and bake a 20 pound turkey in 3 1/2 hours....well, the bag and oven do the baking. I love it. Easy work. Easy clean up. Moist turkey.

My brother, in Northern Ohio, grills his turkey on his grill outside.

Barb

I've been watching foodtv over the last few years and searching the internet etc. Alton Brown has an excellent show on cooking turkeys. I've found the following works pretty well:

start at about 350 (higher than package recommendation) for maybe an hour then turn down the heat for the remainder of the recommended time. Typically we are now doing a > 20 pound turkey these days. This year we have another large crowd so we may need 25 lbs.

Aluminum foil covering is important for the legs and other thin pieces. After the high heat, you can (and probably should) put an aluminum foil tent over the entire turkey. One trick we learned for large birds was to not use a metal rack in the pan - instead use carrots, onions, potatoes, celery to cover the bottom of the pan and rest the bird on the vegetables. These can be the dreggs of your vegetable supply if needed because they will be well overcooked. The juice from this setup makes a very flavorful gravy.

Speed is the key - keep the oven hot enough. We can start a turkey at 9am and have it ready to eat by 2. I take it out of the oven at 1:30 so it can rest for half an hour. This is a key step (according to Alton Brown and my own experience).

The tv cooks don't recommend stuffing the bird, but I still do - I make sure it is a pretty wet stuffing. If you stuff a bird with dry stuffing it will almost certainly soak up the moisture during cooking. Juices like apple cider, orange juice as well as chicken stock, pieces of apple, ham (sausage or bacon) help, too.

For basting, I use a mixture of pure maple syrup, honey, cranberry-orange sauce, onions and olive oil. you can inject under the skin (the turkey's not yours ;) ) and apply directly to the turkey skin. Baste periodically.

We sometimes do a "legless" turkey in our crock pot with onion soup mix & cranberry sauce on Sundays. It usually turns out pretty well but can get dry if the sermon goes long. ;)

I've never tried frying turkey - it looks pretty dangerous

Doug

[Joel Merrill]

I've had great success deep frying for 3 minutes per pound plus 4 minutes overall. So a 20-pound turkey would be 64 minutes. I use an injectable butter and garlic marinade. EXCELLENT!

That's a very popular way to make it around here. I've had it and it was very good. We were doing outside and it was cold and windy. We were not regulating the heat as well as we needed to and we should have been checking it when it was close to being done. It was our fault it got over cooked.

I attached a couple pictures of us doing it. We had to improvise a wind break so it wouldn't blow the flame out. It was a chilly day.
Joel