Friday, March 14, 2008

And Bring A Turkey!

I love turkey! Roast turkey and roast chicken are both recipes that cookbooks and grandmothers assume everyone knows. (Therefore I rarely see a recipe for a basic roast turkey.) It has taken me years to figure out how to make a good one. Keep your mind away from Grandma Shirley's disturbing raw turkey imagery and you're set!

1 turkey breast up to 8 lbs. (I prefer the kind with the bagged guts so I don't have to do any digging)
Salt
Freshly ground pepper
1/2 an onion, quartered
Fresh sprigs of:
Thyme
Rosemary
Sage
1/4 cube soft butter
1 Reynolds oven bag
1 T. flour

Release the turkey from those high-security bags they come in, remove the giblets, rinse, and pat dry with paper towels. Set the turkey in the pan you'll be cooking it in while you cut the onion and put the flour in the oven bag. Come back to the turkey and pat it dry again. Liberally salt and pepper the cavity between the breasts (the turkey's, not yours) and put a few sprigs of herbs in, followed by the onion. Tuck the rest of the herb sprigs under the skin of the turkey breasts (you'll need to cut a little opening to get them in there far enough). Rub with butter (with your fingers is the only way!), then salt and pepper the whole bird. Put the turkey into the oven bag, leaving room for heat to expand around it, and place it in a shallow roasting pan. For an 8 lb. turkey, bake at 350 degrees for an hour and 50 minutes. (The package for the oven bags has excellent instructions for smaller birds.)

Serve with yukon gold mashed potatoes and fresh green beans. Delicious!

3 comments:

Jen said...

I like to stuff the bird with quartered onions, lemons, and the fresh thyme and rosemary sprigs. Stuff it up! It's delicious-
And you're right, it takes a long time to find a good roast turkey recipe.
Raw turkey? I don't think I've heard that one.....

Nicole said...

She thinks they look like babies. Human babies.

Lemons are a good add on for the roast turkey. I used to do garlic, too, but I found it kept me from using the leftovers in other recipes.

Kristi said...

Sounds nummy! Oh, and I like the cleavage comment, ha!