Spurious News: How to cook a turkey, for reals this time [View all]

[jmowreader]

As a lot of you are painfully aware, I work for a newspaper. I like working for a newspaper.

We're coming up on Thanksgiving, and every year we have a tradition: one of the elementary school classes assigns the kids to write a story on how to cook a turkey and we publish them all in a special section. There you learn that the first step in cooking a turkey is to either "buy a turkey" or "shoot a turkey" - you wouldn't believe how many of these recipes require guns to accomplish - and that it should be cooked either at one degree for 300 hours or 600 degrees for 30 minutes.

My recommendation is that unless you're trying to get your inheritance early you don't follow any of these recipes.

So...how in the hell do you actually do this and come out with a turkey your guests will not only survive but like? Follow along.

INGREDIENTS:
One turkey that isn't frozen. If you decide to wait until the day before Thanksgiving to buy it, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!!! buy a fresh turkey. If you can't get a fresh one at that late date, you're having roast beef or ham for Thanksgiving. The recipe for that will not be printed here.
At least a pound of butter.
A pound of onions.
A pound of carrots.
A pound of celery.
Salt, pepper and poultry seasoning or Cajun/Creole seasoning - if you use Cajun/Creole seasoning substitute green bell pepper for the carrots.
A case of canned cat food and a jar of catnip.

EQUIPMENT:
An oven big enough to hold a turkey.
A REAL roasting pan with a rack in it, not one of those fucking aluminum foil things - yeah, you have to wash it after dinner but the aluminum foil ones tend to fail at the worst times, like when you're taking the turkey out of the oven.
A good meat thermometer. Restaurant supply stores have the kind you want. Traeger sells the "Meater" wireless thermometer which displays temperature on your phone, but those are $100 apiece. There are digital-readout ones that work well and cost way less than that. If you do get a Meater you won't have to keep opening the oven to probe the turkey - it stays in the whole time you're cooking it.
A skillet.
An oven-safe bowl.
A turkey lifter. These are massive forks you can use to lift the beast out of the pan. You get two of them.
Two basting brushes.
A roll of aluminum foil and a couple rolls of paper towels, plus a plastic bag to put the used paper towels in.
A big platter to put it on and a sharp knife and carving fork to carve it.
An 18x18 porcelain tile to set the roasting pan on after you finish baking the turkey if your countertops are ANYTHING but porcelain tile. Even if your countertops are stainless steel you need a tile for the pan - if you set a hot pan on a steel countertop you have created a hazardous situation because it'll get hot enough to burn you very quickly.

PROCESS:
Step One: Open some cat food, put it in a bowl and put the bowl on the other side of the house from where the kitchen is. The only thing you use the cat food and catnip for is to try to keep your cats from eating the turkey before you get the chance to. Cat food-flavored turkey would be...disgusting.

Step Two: Heat your oven to 325°. Chop up the vegetables and saute them in butter with salt and the seasoning you have - and about twice as much seasoning as you think you will need. The reason people started shoving a bread-egg mixture into turkeys was to fill the cavity so the inside of the bird doesn't dry out in cooking. Later on they found out it tastes good when you eat it alongside the bird. Unfortunately for you, potentially hazardous foods like stuffing can only be between 40° and 140° Fahrenheit for two hours or less...and in a turkey it will be in the "danger zone" for way longer than that. In other words, stuffing a turkey is an engraved invitation to food poisoning. This vegetable mix (French chefs call this mirepoix; if you use bell peppers people in Louisiana call it trinity) is not a potentially hazardous food and it'll do everything stuffing will except give you a case of the shits.

Step Three: Tear off about three feet of aluminum foil, fold it in half crossways with the shiny side in, and set it somewhere you can grab it quick.

Step Four: Examine your turkey. There will probably be a plastic device on it that holds the ends of the legs together so it looks pretty in the package. Remove that because a melted-plastic-flavored turkey is the only thing more disgusting than a cat food-flavored one. If this thing started out in your house as frozen, there'll be a bag full of organs shoved up inside it. Remove that too. Throw the liver in the bag with the paper towels and boil the giblets for your gravy. Melt some of the butter you've got left over from sauteing the mirepoix or trinity and add salt and seasoning to the butter.

Step Five: Pat the turkey dry with paper towels and put the towels in the bag. Set it on the rack in the pan with the breast facing up, brush it with melted butter, cram it full of as much mirepoix or trinity as you can get in there, and tent the turkey with the foil. DO NOT wrap the turkey completely up - you've got to let some of the moisture in the bird fly free. Wrapping the bird in foil will stop that from happening. If you are thinking about wrapping the bird in foil or using a bag to cook it in, you may as well just boil the damned thing. Boiled turkey probably has its fans but your guests aren't really expecting that, so don't. Put this basting brush in the dishwasher if you have one or the sink if you don't and don't use it again today - this is to prevent cross-contamination between raw and cooked turkey. Also get rid of this batch of melted butter for the same reason.

Step Six: As "Aunt Marie from San Francisco" says, just put the fuckin' turkey in the oven. Yell out at the top of your lungs "Donald Trump is a goddamned communist who wants to destroy America and anyone who thinks otherwise can get the fuck out now!" to cause all your MAGAt relatives to flee. Trust me: you'll be happier this way.

Step Seven: Check the cat food bowl and replenish as necessary. Do this as often as you have to.

Step Eight: Once an hour, open the oven, brush the turkey with melted seasoned butter using the other brush and check the temperature at the thickest part of the thigh with the meat thermometer. Put the tent back on and put it back in. WASH THE THERMOMETER PROBE EVERY TIME YOU USE IT!!! Do not rely on the little pop-up thing they stick in turkeys at the factory; those cost two cents and are worth both of them.

Step Nine: When you hit 150° on the meat thermometer remove the foil tent so the turkey can brown. This is the time to start cutting up and peeling your potatoes.

Step Ten: When you hit 160° start boiling the potatoes.

Step Eleven: When you hit 165° take the fuckin' turkey out of the oven and set the pan on that tile I told you to get. Lift it out of the pan and set it on the serving platter. Place two guards who can catch a jumping cat around it in case the cat food didn't do its job. Make your gravy. Don't be like my mother and leave it in a half hour longer just to make sure it's done unless you always set the table with a Sawzall next to every plate. At 165° it's done, all right? (Funny story: the first year I was back in Idaho I made a "mother of all trivets" by gluing little rubber feet to the bottom of an 18x18 tile. When I did this Mom was like "where am I going to store this when I'm not using it?" As it turned out that wasn't an issue; she used it every meal for the rest of her life because it was so handy. Now my entire countertop is porcelain tile so I don't need anything like that.) Remove the mirepoix or trinity and use it in your gravy.

Step Twelve: Half an hour after the turkey came out of the oven it's ready to eat.