To Roast A Turkey...

Saturday I roasted my turkey.
Here is my turkey at the beginning:

The first step was to remove the turkey from the package and get him into the roasting pan. Seems easy enough, yes? Wrong! This was actually the hardest part of the whole process. To begin with he is heavy, wet, slippery and still frozen inside. So the To begin, the turkey and I were at the sink. I couldn't get the neck and giblets out so I was running hot water into the cavity. This was making the turkey more slippery. He slipped and flopped once causing a big splash and lots of Turkey juice splashed onto my face. Finally I got the inside stuff out of the turkey, rinsed the turkey and patted the turkey dry. Then with the help of Mr. P I got the turkey into the roasting pan. From this point on it was much easier.

Once he was in the roasting pan I stuffed the cavity with cut up lemon, celery, onion and garlic. I brushed the outside of the turkey with melted butter and then he went to the oven. Then I had to Clorox my kitchen and myself which was covered in gross turkey juice.l

This is the part I messed up. Betty Crocker said that a twenty pound turkey should take 41/2 to 5 1/2 hours (you baste the last 30 minutes to an hour). I put the turkey in at 1:30pm. Then assuming I had at least four hours to kill I decided to go decorate Halloween cookies with some friends at church. I came back at 5 ready to start basting my turkey for his last 30 minutes of cooking only to find that he was already 190 (you are supposed to start basting at 150 and take the turkey out at 160 then let it rest)! So my turkey was overcooked even by Betty Crocker standards, which my Mother says are out of date anyway.

However, despite a lack of basting and being overcooked the turkey was still delicious and huge! We ate turkey for dinner, and lunch on Sunday. I served the roasted turkey with homemade cranberry sauce, mashed sweet potatoes and a green salad with toasted pecans, apples and dried cranberries.

After dinner I decided to make broth out of the turkey carcase. While Mr. P sweetly did the dishes, I pulled all of the remaining meat off the turkey. There were two dinner plates piled high with meat. I separated the meat into freezer bags for later meals. Then I disjointed the bird and split the bones up into my two largest pots. I added fresh celery, onion, garlic, bay leaves, salt and pepper. Then I filled both pots with water and brought them to a boil, turned them to a simmer and let simmer for four hours. Then I strained the broth and filled 10 quart sized containers and froze them.