Art of Roasting a Turkey

In honor of Thanksgiving, i would like to share the art of cooking the turkey - my way.



First, purchase an heirloom turkey such as the one i bought from Rainbow Ranch Farms. If you are used to paying less than $20 for your turkey, then the price for a beautiful, grass fed, free range turkey may shock you...about $170 about half is from the shipping. The turkey comes fresh and wrapped in a burlap sack and plastic. I received a 22 lb turkey but the weight might fool you - there isn't as much meat as you expect because some of the weight is from the dense bone that comes from raising a healthy, free running animal. 1-2 hours before roasting, take the turkey out to bring to room temperature. Breast side up, put an ice pack on the breast meat. I heard this tip from Harold McGee, food scientist and author of "Food and Cooking"



Preheat the oven to 300oF. I like stuffing the bird (challah bread stuffing - wonderful!), and smother it with maple syrup/apple cider/herbs baste, and start roasting it breast side down. Monitor the browning and turn over when the back side has the perfect color. At this point, i turned the heat to 290oF because it seemed like it was going pretty fast (started at 1:40, turned over at 3 pm). I also covered areas with aluminium foil to prevent burning and drying out. I continued roasting at this temperature and as the breast turned a beautiful roast color, i checked the internal temperature of the thigh(75oC) and breast (65oC) and it was done at 4:30pm. This year was the best ever in terms of the juiciness and flavor of the breast meat. I usually have a lot of the breast meat leftover but we were pretty much fighting over those leftovers. The dark meat was also very flavorful but i find that dark meat is more forgiving.

So there you have it - no, it didn't have anything to do with art, but rather the art of roasting a wonderful bird.