Turkey is not the prime meal for Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner, but it serves as a tasty meal all year along.
Although preparing turkey might seem simple, as you just have to put it in microwave and cook for certain hours, it is not just so. Roasting a turkey and making a fool-proof recipe out of it, involves a lot of things. Here are a few tips to ensure that you do not risk the bird of becoming undesirable or dry.
Tips to Roast Turkey for Christmas 2012 Menu:
Before we begin with the tips about roasting a turkey for a perfect recipe, you first need to know that a younger bird is more tender and tasty. A tip to identify younger turkey is to look for lighter purple colored bird. Now, let us see the tips to roast the bird in such a perfect way that its flavor is preserved.
It is important that you dry the bird before roasting it. Do not brine the bird , before roasting it, unwrap the turkey and let it be naked in the cool fridge air.
Remove the giblets of the bird and rinse it well with water. As per your preference, you can either keep the giblets aside for future use or throw it. Some people like using it to make gravy.
Coat turkey with a thin layer of vegetable oil. This allows the seasoning to stick to the bird well and also helps in roasting it to brown color.
Before setting the turkey in a roasting pan, put its breasts on ice pack. This allows cooling the temperature of breast, as breasts should be cooked for long and thus putting it on ice gives it a temperature head start.
Instead of water, you can pour chicken broth in the roasting pan as this will add taste to the turkey and once the turkey is roasted, you can use the chicken broth to prepare the gravy.
Usually, people prefer cooking the turkey with stuffing. However, I will suggest this is a bad idea. Stuffing would be just one more thing that oven has to heat up and until the stuffing is cooked, the breasts would be over baked.
Use a food thermometer to check the temperature of the bird. It needs o be cooked until its internal temperature reaches 165 degree Fahrenheit. Use the thermometer at the thickest part of the breast, so that you get the accurate reading.
Based on the total weight of the turkey, you will have to cook it. For a turkey weighing 6-8 pounds, roasting time is 2 ½ hours to 3 hours.
Roasting a turkey for the big day meal can be an overwhelming task sometimes, and if it is the first time for you then certainly the above tips will be of great help. Roast a perfect turkey with the given tips and have a tasty feast.
