Basic Turkey Cookery

Learn how to Create a Turkey with Onions or Turkey with Garlic Feast

Dec 19, 2008 Deborah Harding

Making a turkey dinner for the holidays isn't that hard at all. Even if you have never made turkey before you will be able to with these easy to follow instructions.

Although turkey is popular during Thanksgiving many people also have turkey for Christmas dinner, probably because of the tradition in other English speaking countries to have goose for the Christmas feast. They didn’t have turkeys at that point in time because if they did the goose would have taken a back seat to the turkey.

How big of a turkey will you need? That depends on how many people you plan on serving. To give you an idea a 12 to 15 pound turkey will feed 10 to 12 people with no leftovers while an 18 to 22 pound bird will feed about 20 people. If you will only be serving 4 people it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get a turkey breast, as long as you aren’t a turkey leg lover.

You can get fresh turkey, or turkey that has never been frozen, at most grocery stores these days. Many people prefer to get the frozen type and that is fine. Just make sure you have enough time to defrost it before it needs to be cooked. NEVER defrost a turkey on the kitchen counter. It must defrosted for several days inside the refrigerator. A large turkey will take up to 4 or 5 days to defrost so don’t plan on purchasing your turkey the day before you want to cook it. Figure about 5 hours of refrigerator defrosting time per pound.

The day you are going to cook the turkey, take it out of the refrigerator and let it come to room temp. This will take about 1 hour. There will be a package inside the turkey containing the neck and giblets (heart, liver, and gizzard). There are many first time turkey cooking stories of people that have left the package in. Don’t do that. Remove it. These parts can be boiled and chopped and used in making broths and stuffings if you desire.

Wash the turkey with water and pat dry. Make sure to rinse inside the cavity as well as outside. You will notice that the turkey has two cavities, the one between the legs and up by the neck. You can put stuffing in both cavities but this will greatly increase cooking time and stuffing that has been cooked separately from the turkey has never caused food poisoning, while there are instances of this happening from stuffing cooked inside the bird.

How long do you cook the turkey? Good question. The more important answer is that you use an instant read meat thermometer even though the turkey might have that miraculous button that pops when it is done. They aren’t very trustworthy. Insert the thermometer near the end of cooking time (given below) and it should read 165 degrees. Old safety regulations stated that the internal temperature of a turkey should be 180 degrees but that has been changed. Remember that the temperature will continue to raise the longer you have it out of the oven at first, so don’t leave it out without carving and serving more than 20 minutes.

Cooking times for turkeys at 325 degrees

8 to 12 pounds 3 hours

12 to 16 pounds 3.5 to 4 hours

16 to 20 pounds 4 to 4.5 hours

20 to 24 pounds 4.5 to 5 hours

In this article there are two articles for cooking a basic turkey. In More Elaborate Turkey Cookery for the Holidays you will find other recipes such as Cranberry Glazed Turkey, Apple Honey Glazed Turkey, etc.

Roast Turkey with Lemon and Onion

• 1 – 15 pound turkey (adjust other ingredients – a little more or less for other weight turkeys.
• Juice of one lemon
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• 1 stick melted butter
• 1 yellow onion, peeled and quartered
• 2 sticks celery, chunked with tops and bottoms included
• 2 carrots
• a bunch of parsley
• sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Lather the inside of the large cavity of the turkey with the lemon juice (cut a lemon in half and squeeze while rubbing the inside of the bird). Use only half of the lemon.
3. Rub the inside of the cavity with a handful of salt.
4. Put inside the cavity the peeled quartered onion, celery, carrots, and parsley.
5. Close the cavity with string or with metal skewers and make sure the legs are tied together.
6. Put some of the parsley in the neck cavity and skewer shut.
7. Brush melted butter all over the outside of the turkey and sprinkle rosemary and thyme, salt and pepper over the top.
8. Place turkey in the oven and cook 30 minutes covered with a lid or foil.
9. Reduce heat to 325 and continue roasting for about 4 hours. Remove the foil the last hour of roasting and baste at least 4 times.

• 1 – 15 pound turkey
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 stick melted butter
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon crushed garlic
• 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 teaspoon dried crushed sage

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Melt butter and combine with olive oil.
3. Add garlic and herbs and combine well.
4. Brush inside of the cavity with light brushing of the mixture.
5. Skewer cavities shut and make sure legs are tied together.
6. Brush the rest of the butter mixture over the top of the turkey.
7. Place turkey in oven and cook 30 minutes.
8. Cover turkey with lid or foil and cook 4 hours.
9. Uncover the last hour and base at least 4 times.

See other holiday information and recipes at 2008 Prymethyme Christmas. You can access all of Deborah Harding’s articles from this page. Just click on Suite 101 articles.

The copyright of the article Basic Turkey Cookery in Recipes is owned by Deborah Harding. Permission to republish Basic Turkey Cookery in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Roast Turkey

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