Easy Thanksgiving Turkey Recipe | The Turkey Recipe We've Been Making for 3 Decades!

Okay, the final piece of meal, the turkey. Hi everybody, today we're going to show you how we make Thanksgiving. And over the years, we've tried it all. We've tried different versions of turkey, we've tried different sides, all kinds of things. But when it comes down to it, all you need is the basics. And we like it simple, we've found. That's a day of family getting together, right? So nobody wants to be stressed out by making like four or five, six sides or what have you. You just need the basics. And then everybody can enjoy the family time together and enjoy that time talking together without being stressed out by food. For example, everybody also has their own job, right? So Sarah marinated the turkey. Caitlin's going to be making the mashed potatoes and she's going to be making a Caesar salad. It's also on the blog, recipes on the blog. I'm making that herb crusted stuffing today, which is unbelievable. It's tremendous. And Judy is going to make the hot vegetables. She'll make Chinese vegetables, just a little sautéed in garlic, probably, or however she wants to do it. It's up to her. Whatever she makes is going to turn out great. And of course, last but not least, gravy, turkey based gravy. We're going to make that and that's going to go over the mashed potatoes. That's going to go over the stuffing or over whatever you want. And sometimes we forget cranberry sauce. So we've done this too. We tried to make fresh cranberry. We always go back to the can. So easy that sometimes we get to the table and we're like, wait, where's the cranberry? We run over the cupboard, open this up. Perfect. First thing that you have to do for Thanksgiving is buy your turkey. So make sure you buy your turkey, let it defrost. It's going to take a day or two, marinate overnight. That's what we've done here. And right now we've taken it out and to let it come up to slightly room temperature. Okay. So now Sarah is going to actually show you how to marinate that turkey. And she's going to give you some tips on the size of the turkey for prepping it and getting it ready to the state it is now ready for the go. All right. We're going to make the marinade for the turkey. I feel like there've been a lot of sort of dry brining trends out there. It's essentially a marinade. That's what we're doing. And this is how our grandpa always did it. And this is how we're going to do it. So we have two and a half tablespoons of salt in there for a 14 pound turkey. We have a teaspoon of pepper and seven cloves of garlic. If you have a larger or smaller turkey, you can use the recipe slider in our recipe card to scale the recipe up and down. I'm going to add a tablespoon of melted butter and a third of a cup of olive oil. You could use olive oil or like light olive oil or you could use avocado oil or any neutral oil would also work. Vegetable, canola, etc. So we're going to add that. And now we're just going to whiz it up until it is a paste. So you want the marinade to be pretty fine because if you have chunks of garlic, they tend to burn on the turkey. Okay. Bird is pretty clean. Very nice. Not a heck of a lot to do. Give it a quick rinse. Take out the giblets. Don't forget to remove the giblets. Gotta remember to remove the giblets. Usually they're over here and you think that's funny, but some people roast the turkey with the giblets inside. It's like a plastic bag. Okay. So here we go. Yes. And then you can start it. Start it breast side down, everyone, because you're going to, you're going to marinate it and then you're going to flip it over and you want to put the neck in here. There are a lot of neck lovers. Okay. Everyone, if you don't pat the turkey dry, the marinade is going to might like slip off a little bit. You're also may not get quite the sort of crisp skin that you want. If you fold the paper towel, it's actually, I find that it is quite a bit more absorbent. So I fold the towel in half before I start patting. So we've positioned the turkey breast side down. We want the turkey to sit breast side up overnight. If you leave it breast side down, it's going to get like indentations in it from all these vegetables on the base. And you don't want that to happen. You want your, want your breasts to be nice and smooth. So we are just going to start by marinating this way. And then once I've marinated this side, I will flip it over and then marinate the other side. So I don't have to keep like flip flopping the turkey. That's why we put it breast side down to start. There's some feathers here. I'm just going to grab those. Good. All right. So now I will take my, take my marinade and I'm going to put some on the turkey's back. I'll use a little less than half because we want to save enough for the top of the turkey, but then also some for the cavity. Rubbing and massaging the turkey with the marinade. You want a pretty big roasting pan here. This is like, I would say like a medium size bird. This is like a 13 pound, 13 or 14. But if you have an even bigger turkey, you need like quite a large roasting pan to fit it into. That's good. Now I'm going to flip it. So as you can see, we already have some celery and carrots stuck and an indentation. That's why we don't want that. So I'm going to do the breast and the legs. Okay. Rub it all. Make sure you're getting like all the crevices. Yeah. Actually this turkey is like, I don't know why they did this, but like this is like open. That really shouldn't be the case in this turkey that we bought. But because it's already open, I'm just going to like marinate in there where I can get to it. Yeah. It's like, why? Why did they rip the skin flap? This flap should just be there. Silly. I'm going to put a good amount into the cavity. Okay. Well, this is why you source your turkey early, but you don't know what it's going to look like before it comes out of the package. Unless you get it from a butcher or from like a farm or something. I'm going to rub the tail. People are going to fight over that later. Okay. And also I'm going to season the neck. You know, there are people who like the turkey neck. You want to make sure that it's seasoned as well. There's no liver. Oh wow. Barley doesn't get turkey liver. Actually she didn't like the liver. This is our lovely marinated turkey. I'm honestly like, when did marinating become dry brining? It's just, you're just marinating it. I guess it's dry brining because so many people liquid, like use a wet brine for turkey. It is just not necessary. Everyone, this is all you have to do. We've been making this turkey for decades. It is always juicy, always good. And it's always, I guess dry brine, but really just a marinade. So when you bring your turkey home, it is in all likelihood going to be frozen. So make sure that you get the turkey several days before Thanksgiving. You're going to need a day for every like five pounds of turkey to thaw it in the refrigerator. So if you have like a 14 pound turkey like this, you're going to need like three days to thaw it in the refrigerator. If you have like a huge honking, like 20 pound turkey, you're going to need five, six days. Real talk. If your turkey is frozen solid, and you are like two days out from Thanksgiving, you can take a bowl of water, cold water in the sink and put your turkey in there. It'll make it thaw faster. The bowl of water technique will not save you day of though, because I have seen that day of is tough. Well, day of is tough because then you haven't marinated your turkey. So that's bad. The point is, try to think ahead a little bit. Also, let's talk about turkey sizes real quick. This is a 14 pound turkey. In our opinion, a 14 pound turkey is kind of the perfect size. It's not so big that you end up having to cook it for a really long time. Because if you end up having to cook it a really long time to just cook the bird through, you likely will end up with dry breast meat, like you're just not going to get as juicy of a turkey. So this turkey, which is nice and compact, and you know, a good size, but not huge, is really ideal. So if you have like 20 people coming for Thanksgiving, in theory, you would need a giant turkey, it's better to cook two smaller turkeys than one really big honking one. So for us, the max on turkey size, on a good turkey size is probably 17 pounds. If you have to go above 17 pounds, better to cook two smaller like 12 or 13 pound turkeys. If you only have one oven, and you're like, how am I going to cook these two turkeys in my one oven, you can if you have a grill, we have actually cooked the second turkey outside in the grill. And it has worked surprisingly very well. So you basically just heat the grill closed. It's essentially an oven like your grill has that like temperature thingy, you watch it, you make sure that it's like whenever it gets to like 425 or whatever, you stick that turkey in there, you make sure that it's rotated a couple times while it's cooking so that you're cooking it evenly. The grill is actually a really good sort of second oven if you're running out of oven space on Thanksgiving Day. So now we're going to cover it, we're going to cover this little baby and we're going to put it into the fridge to marinate overnight and we will see it tomorrow when we cook it. It looks magnificent. All right, while you're doing some prepping, you definitely want to preheat your oven. So we're lucky enough to have a double oven, we're actually going to put the turkey in the bottom oven because it's easier to take out it's kind of heavy. So you want to make sure you have enough space in your oven So what we're going to do for the bottom oven, we're going to put it on bake and 425. I know that seems high, but that's what we do and that's what my father used to do, roast the first hour at 425 and then we reduce the temperature. All right, so we're going to preheat the top oven to 350 degrees for the stuffing. Like I said, if you've got a double oven or two ovens, it's great. If you don't, you're like, hey, what do I do? I only have one oven. What you can do is you can preheat the oven to 350 and pre-cook your stuffing for 45 minutes. You just got to plan in that time. So do that first, take it out, turn it up, roast your turkey and then you can reheat your stuffing later on another rack later, especially while your turkey is resting. So normally we don't trust the turkey, but this turkey was kind of the skin over here. The skin flaps are open and if it cooks that way, it's not going to cook right and it's going to dry out. So we're going to trust this turkey. Some of the turkeys already have like this plastic trussing in there, but you don't need that. And what does trussing mean? It just means tying these things together. So I mean, there's all kinds of different ways to truss everybody has their method. As long as you keep these two, keep these two, uh, legs together, you're good. That's it. It's trust. Simple as that. All right. Hey everyone. My dad's washing his hands from the turkey trussing process. So let me just quickly talk about how to roast this thing. So a lot of people cook turkey for a really long time. That's really just not necessary. We're going to cook this bird. That's around 13 and a half pounds for around two and a half hours. So it's going to cook at high temperature for one hour, and then we're going to rotate it halfway through. So at 30 minutes and then it's going to cook at a lower temperature for around an hour and a half. That's really all you need to cook this bird through. It's going to be juicy. The skin is going to be browned and crispy. You do not need to cook your turkey for like four hours. It's just not necessary. Um, in fact, this process is really similar to cooking like a roast chicken. We only cook a roast chicken for about an hour and 15 minutes at 425. If you just cook it at a higher temperature for a shorter amount of time, that bird cooks through. It's juicy. It's delicious. This is a similar situation. We're going to blast it with higher heat. Then eventually, so before we switch to the lower temperature, we're going to flip the bird so it will finish breast side up. Okay. And so I just like kind of put it in like that and then slide it this way so you don't risk burning your hands. And we will see that turkey in 30 minutes when we will just rotate the pan 180 degrees. Okay. So it's been 30 minutes. We have not looked at or touched this turkey in that 30 minutes. Now we are just going to rotate it. You just want to make sure that the turkey cooks evenly. That's why we rotate and that's it. It is going to cook at 425 for another 30 minutes. All right, everyone. So it's been in the oven for one hour. So I'm going to take it out now. Ooh, it's golden. I'm going to reduce the temperature to 325. That's what we're going to put it back in at. This is going to be probably the most challenging part of this recipe, which is to say, I mean, the rest of it was pretty easy. So you saw we have to flip this turkey. So it's probably the most challenging part of cooking any turkey recipe really. The implements I have here are a large wooden, this is a wok spatula. I like it because this is kind of wide, so I feel like it's going to have give me like good like leverage inside the turkey. I also have a meat fork here. My dad likes to use a fork. I personally like to kind of prevent myself from piercing the turkey if I can help it. So I have it here. I may not use it. And I have a clean kitchen towel. You know, if you get a little turkey grease on it, you're going to wash it. It's fine. But I have a paper towel here. So I'm just going to like put this thing, this spatula in there. I'm just going to put I just put this spatula into the cavity. And so I'm rather than trying to roll the thing, which is actually pretty tough. I'm going to actually flip it this way. I'm going to flip it this way. So it's a lot easier to flip that way. Because rolling it is pretty tough. Actually, it's not that easy. So it's it's Yeah, my dad rolls. Now we can just slide it back. So it's a little more centered. And as you can see, the top of the turkey is pretty pale. So the rest of the cooking time, we're going to work on getting color on this side of the turkey. Oh my god. Okay, so let me just quickly talk about the rest of the cooking process here. We are going to put the turkey back in at 325. And we're going to cook it for about an hour and 15 to an hour and a half more, you're going to want to rotate the pan again once halfway through I say an hour and 15 to an hour and a half because this turkey is like 13 and a half pounds. And also oven temperatures do vary, right? Like your oven, even though it says it's 325, it's probably not a perfect 325. So it may take a little bit longer, a little bit shorter, the way that you're going to tell that that turkey is done is with an instant read thermometer, you want the thigh to register 165 degrees thickest part of the thigh. And we are just going to check it early so that we don't overcook this bird, you definitely want the turkey temperature to be 165. If it's a little bit less, you do risk some of that turkey being undercooked inside, you really don't want to be carving your turkey after having it let it rest and then start cutting it and then it's like pink or like, you know, you just don't want that. So 165. Okay, I'm gonna put this thing back in. Once again, I slide it in this way and then rotate so that you don't your hands aren't getting close to the side of the oven. Okay, so we're going to set the timer for around 40 minutes. And at that point, I'm going to rotate the turkey again. At this point, we're about an hour and a half away from this turkey being done. After we bring it out of the oven, we're going to let it rest for at least 20 minutes. So we're about two hours away from turkey dinner. So within that two hour period, we are going to finish up the stuffing, make the mashed potatoes, make a vegetable dish and make the gravy. Okay, so we are going to rotate the turkey for the last time and check the progress. Yeah, well, this this part is still kind of pale. So that needs to get a little bit maybe I'll get a tiny piece of foil just for the top. Okay, so I have this little piece of foil here. So I don't want to cover the entire breast because parts of it still need to brown. But I am going to cover just this part just so that it doesn't brown too much. And we will set the timer for 35 minutes, that'll be an hour and 15 minutes at 325. And we will check the temperature. So when it comes to tempting the breast, just look for dark if there are dark spots on your breast, and they're looking like by the time the turkey is done, that area might be burned. That's the area that you're just going to want to tend to the foil just prevents it from browning further. And you just saw what I did, I just tended that narrow part at the top because of the shape of the turkey, it's closer to the where the heat is coming off the top of the oven. So that's going to brown faster. That's why you attempt the turkey, we're going to roast it for another 35 minutes. And that is going to be around an hour and 15 minutes at 325, which will put us at about two hours and 15 minutes total, we'll put the thermometer into the thickest part of the thigh and we'll see where we're at. Okay, so the timer just went off. Let's look at the turkey. Ooh, it's nice and golden. And we are going to check the internal temperature. Okay, let's take the tent off. Got pretty nice brown, browning on the skin. Okay, so here, you're saying here? Here? Right here. Okay. See where this bone goes down Okay. Okay, so we're gonna put the thermometer into the thickest part of the thigh and we are going to check 160. You hit the bone? Well, now I'm like, where is the thermometer come up? It came out the other side. Okay. I think it's done. It's done. Okay, now I'm just gonna cover the turkey so it can rest. Okay, mom, how does it feel knowing that you're just coming in at the 11th hour to cook some vegetables? Feels great. I don't have to do it. That's why Thanksgiving is always being a good holiday for me because I don't have to cook. But I pay back during the Chinese New Year time. That's true. I do the paybacks. Okay, so we're gonna put this in the gravy separator. We're just separating the oil in the gravy separator. All right, oh, this is nice. Gravy separator is a beautiful thing, but you gotta watch as soon as you start. Oh, okay, there you go. That's the oil. That's what we're gonna use for a base of our gravy. We always serve these vegetables. They are full of flavor and then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put some hot water into this thing and we're gonna use that for our gravy. Look at these caramelized vegetables. They're just like gold. They're almost as good as a turkey. Beautiful. Okay, all right, I added boiling water here. This will double your stock. Oh yeah, this is better than any stock that you're gonna get. It's crazy. Crazy. And you've kind of gotten a jump on washing. That's true. I'm gonna get a deep bowl over here. I'm gonna put the strainer on. That's enough there. Let's put it in here. This does some of the particles out of there, but you know what? It's not end of the world if you have a little bit of this gravy that has little particles in there and it tastes good. It won't matter. All right, it's all for our gravy. Okay, low heat. Put a little bit of paprika in here. We have the full recipe. I'm ad-libbing here. I have the full recipe on the blog. Get some flour. Just really, really nice. Should be enough. I remember I'm gonna add a little cornstarch to it. Whoa, there's gold. Liquid gold. Pour it all in. Could have gone a little heavier on the flour. We've got cornstarch slurry. Now we have dark soy sauce. The trick we've been doing for years, since I remember as a kid, adding dark soy sauce into the gravy. It adds, the dark soy sauce adds a nice color and it adds a really nice umami flavor. And the rest of the western world has now discovered it. Oh yeah. Okay, we'll let that come up to a boil. Very nice. I also like a very peppery gravy. I'm gonna add some black pepper to this, but for now I'm gonna drizzle in the cornstarch. Oh, look at that. Look at how that thickens up really nicely. And that cornstarch is gonna help with your gelling back. That gravy is ready to go. So I'm just gonna grind some pepper in here. Peppery gravy, for me, I love it. So I won't go crazy on it, but put a good amount of black pepper. And this gravy is ready for the boat. You can also adjust the thickness of your gravy. This is gonna thicken as it cools a little bit when it goes to the table. I think this is a good ratio. I don't want it too thick. Oops, wipe that down later. All right, second one. We always want to get two gravy bowls on the table. It's a popular item. Okay, there we go. Okay, there's only one thing left to do. What is it, mom? Opening the can of cranberry sauce. This is the one other job that you have. Okay. It's a testament to training over the years. Train your kids so they can make Thanksgiving meal for you. And all you have to do is open the cranberry sauce. Okay, here we go. Whoa. Is it gonna come out? It should. You might have to squeeze it. You have to run the knife around it. Oh yeah, run the knife around it, Mark. Oh. I guess I've never done it before. All the way down. All the way. There you go. Release that air. Okay, now it should come out. Come on, baby. Come on. Hello. Squeeze it. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. I think you should also, I guess we're revealing that the walks of... To lay it down. Yes. Okay, here we go. How thick? Like a... Half inch. Yeah. Half inch? How about a quarter? What? Three-eighths. Three-eighths, yes. Three-eighths of an inch. Oops. How's that? Beautiful. Did I do a good job? Excellent. There we go. Okay, the final piece of the meal. The turkey. You got a little scorch mark this year, but it's okay. Okay, so that is our simple Thanksgiving. Still nice enough that you can feel like you accomplished something, but not crazy. So if you're filming it on the other hand, it is a little psychotic. Yeah, and starting at 2 p.m. Happy Thanksgiving. How does it look? Looks great. Very juicy. That garlic. Oh yeah, very juicy. That's beautiful right there. Slicing. And this carcass. This carcass is ready for a little congee. Totally. Juice blowing out of there. It's a well-rested bird. Very nice. All right, best serve. The first plate of turkey has already been decimated. All right, bring it over. Thank you. Replenish. Replenishing. Replenishing.