My
husband’s family celebrated Thanksgiving early this year, and we (the women in
the family), decided on who would bring what; I chose to bring the Turkey
Lurkey!! This is the second time I’ve made Thanksgiving turkey using the
William Sonoma brine and an herb butter recipe. I am happy to say, it turned
out great and was pretty easy!
This
year we had eight guests so I decided on a 14 pound turkey (last year we had a 22 pound
Turkey). You should average one pound per person, or if you want leftovers, 1 ¼
pound per person. I think a fresh turkey is always best, but frozen will work
too. {Make sure you allow yourself a few days in the fridge to defrost the bird
before it’s time to roast it if you purchase a frozen bird.} This year I used a
fresh Zackey Farms Young Turkey.
To
begin, I used a jar of the William Sonoma Turkey Brine. I followed the
directions for making the brine on the back of the container. While the brine
was cooking I prepared my bird. I removed the giblets and washed them under the
faucet before I placed them in a Ziplock bag. I then put the giblets in the
freezer until the big day to use in the gravy. Once the giblets are removed, I
rinsed the turkey under cool water and pat it dry with paper towels and placed
it in a large plastic bag. This year I used a 2 gallon Ziplock bag, but last
year with my bigger turkey I used a 5 gallon bag. Cover turkey completely with
your brine.
Follow the recipe for the brine and then add it to the turkey in
the Ziplock bag. I always double bag my turkey and then I also place the turkey
in a large kitchen plastic trash bag just to ensure no leaks in the
refrigerator. The turkey brine recipe requires that you brine for 12-36 hours prior to
baking; I always brine for 36 hours.
Once
you have brined your bird, remove it from the bag and thoroughly rinse it and
pat dry with paper towels. I place my bird breast up on a poultry rack in a
disposable turkey roasting tin. Preheat the oven on “Convection Bake” at 375
degrees.
HERB
BUTTER RUB RECIPE:
Ingredients:
1
cup room temperature butter (2 sticks)
One
large handful of each fresh herb: basil, thyme, chives, rosemary, sage
2
garlic cloves
Salt
Pepper
Directions:
1.
Finely chop all the herbs and garlic.
2.
Mix herbs and garlic into the room temperature butter.
3.
Add about 8 twists of pepper from your pepper mill( ¼ teaspoon of pepper).
4.
Add a healthy pinch of sea salt(1 teaspoon of salt).
Note:
You can make the herb butter a day or two ahead and keep it in the
refrigerator. Make sure you take it out of the refrigerator two hours
prior to using it, to bring it back to room temperature for easy spreading.
Quarter one white onion in large pieces, chop 4 stalks of
celery and place them inside the turkey cavity. Add to the cavity a handful of
fresh Italian parsley and one handful of fresh Thyme. With clean hands, start
to gently separate the skin of the turkey from the breast meat. Start at the
cavity and work your way towards the neck. When you have separated the skin on
both breasts, take half the amount (1/2 cup) of the herb butter and evenly
distribute it under the skin and on top of the breast meat. Now take the
remaining herb butter and generously coat the rest of the outside of the bird.
Time to bake! Cover the bird with
foil and make sure to cover the wings well (they burn pretty easily).
Place the bird on the bottom rack of your oven and close the door.
I convection baked my bird for two
hours and then I used an instant read thermometer to check the turkey’s
temperature. I placed the thermometer in between the upper part of the leg and
the middle of the breast. The temperature read 120 degrees; a turkey is done
when it reaches 165 degrees. I then cooked my bird, uncovered(remove the foil),
for 20 minutes to brown the top. When the 20 minutes was up, I recovered my turkey
with the same aluminum foil and changed my oven setting to bake at 350 degrees.
My 14 pound turkey took 3 hours and 15 minutes to get to 165 degrees.
I removed my turkey from the oven and
thoroughly wrapped the entire turkey in aluminum foil and secured the foil
under the ridge of the disposable roasting pan to make sure no heat would
escape. Next, I took two large dish towels and laid them over the bird.
Now comes the MOST IMPORTANT PART of
making the turkey…time to rest!!! Give yourself plenty of time for the
bird to rest; this will give you a nice juicy Turkey for Thanksgiving. Last
year, I let the Turkey rest for 1 hour and this year 1 ½ hours. When I removed
the towels and the foil you could see steam coming off the Turkey.
Our Turkey turned out amazing and it
wasn’t hard. Anyone could do it! As a matter of fact, because of an injury to
my left hand, my husband who prefers to stay out of the kitchen (under my
guidance), is the one that made this Turkey (you can see his hands in all the
pictures.)
I hope you give my Turkey Lurkey a try this Thanksgiving.
Gobble Gobble!!
No comments:
Post a Comment