Our First Turkey

Ok, so we didn’t get on pinterest for a Turkey recipe, but we did ask our parents and consult Chef Ramsay on YouTube to learn how to make our very first turkey!

Roger and I were going to host Thanksgiving at our house this year, which of course comes with the tremendous responsibility of prepping the centerpiece of the meal: the turkey.

The shindig later got moved to my Aunt and Uncle’s house, but we did still commit to making the bird. And here’s what we did.

First, we watched this youtube video on how to season it properly:

Basically, Ramsay kills the bird with butter, and if you don’t want to watch the video, this is all we did:

We concocted a butter based on his recipe but made our own modifications. We used 4 sticks of butter (soft, but not melted), a bit of olive oil so the butter doesn’t burn while the turkey is roasting. We added salt, pepper, parsley (the kind that comes in a jar because we don’t keep fresh spices on hand…unfortunately), garlic powder, and lemon juice. We mixed this all up with a fork and Roger took it and smeared it all over the bird between the actual meat and the skin. Then he rubbed it all over the outside of the skin.

We used an oven bag and followed the directions in order to roast the turkey properly. Apparently the bag bastes the turkey while it cooks, and helps steam it so that it cooks the turkey without drying it out. This was a bit of advice from Roger’s dad.

My mom suggested cooking our 23 pound turkey for 4 hours, and then checking it afterwards. Our butterball turkey didn’t come with a pop up thermometer, so we bought a meat thermometer to check the turkey after 4 hours. My mom said once the temperture in the leg was 150 degrees, the Turkey was done. Ours was 180 degrees after the 4 hours, so we took that mug out.

Roger watched another tutorial on how to cut the turkey so we can get the most meat off of it. And we sure did! The meat on the legs came right off the bone. And even the breast meat was tender and delicious!