I rarely re-post, but this post from last Thanksgiving was one of the most popular in the history of This Old Chef...
Trust me, dear readers, this is the flavorful turkey you want to serve your family!
All that actually means is...
I cut out the backbone, then made a little slit on the membrane covering the keel bone, flipped the bird over, pushed down until I heard a fairly loud snap... and then roasted it on a cookie-cooling-type rack set in a sheet pan at 450 for 85-90 minutes.
And that, as they say, was that.
Crisp mahogany skin, juicy dark AND white meat... with no basting, no flipping, no nuthin'.
Does it look like Norman Rockwell? Absolutely not. It looks a little more like Norman Rockwell ran it over with his car... but I've never been a fan of carving the bird in the dining room anyway.
We had mashed potatoes, peas, cranberry chutney, sage dressing using my homemade bread (seriously... it's as big a revelation as fresh sage), and quite possibly my finest gravy to date (partly because the base was my homemade chicken stock simmered with the neck, backbone, and giblets... except the liver).
A wonderful evening by the fire... a 12-pound turkey cooked in 90 minutes... How lucky can you get!
