TURKEY RECOMMENDATIONS
No offense to my parents or grandparents on any side but I spent most of my life thinking oven-baked turkey was just normally a dry, chewy poultry and instead I just made one (they’re on sale at this point!!! nab em!!!) come out juicier and more tender than I’ve ever had in my life. You could cut this turkey’s white meat with a spoon, and I literally did. This is how you do that if you didn’t know:
Soak the turkey in saltwater overnight. I put it vertically into a tall pasta pot tail-up! (*but I hear just covering it in salt without the water can be better still??)
Bake breast side down, rubbed with butter at 350f for an hour, so the juices and fats run into the white meat as they melt.
Flip it over, baste it all over with melted butter again and bake for another hour.
Flip it over again, back to chest-down, remove the foil, baste again and bake until the thigh reaches an internal temperature of 180.
Do not ever cut into it until you are eating it.
DO NOT use coloration to judge doneness!!! This is the #1 thing that ruins everyone’s turkeys!! The meat can be bleach white and still unsafe! It can and also actually should still have a delicately pinkish cast when it’s ready to eat! Temperature and only temperature is the indicator of safety!!!
Once it reaches 180f, take it out of the oven, cover it in foil again, and let it rest a while, this is also an important step that makes a big difference! Ours sat about 20 minutes!
Like I said this came out so damn juicy you could eat the breast meat like some kinda pâté.
All recipes tell you to save the juices but REALLY save the juices on this one, the saltwater brining makes them especially tasty. You can turn them into gravy by mixing them with flour, but they’re also very handy for re-heating your leftovers! Keep them in their own container in the fridge and they’ll cool into a gel. When you want more of that ultra-juicy turkey put your turkey pieces in a tupperware with a couple spoonfuls of that and microwave it loosely covered. Your turkey will steam in its own juice and come out exactly like it was when it was fresh. When I just woke up and was too lazy to make much of a breakfast I also microwaved some of the juices until liquid again and dipped toast in them, which was also super delicious.
