Easy Wild Rice Dressing - The Perfect Thanksgiving Recipe!

And today it is turkey day! We are making a gorgeous cider glazed whole roasted turkey that is sure to be the most beautiful thing at that Thanksgiving table. It's just I feel like it's so easy, it's so delicious, but the cider glaze just takes it to a little bit of a more sort of, ooh, give it a cider glaze for you turkey, just like elevates it a little bit, it's delicious. We're going to start things off very basic, like I made my original Thanksgiving turkey a couple years ago. You're going to need aromatics. For aromatics I've got the standard carrots, celery, onion, garlic, I also have an apple, I've got some fresh herbs, I've got sage, thyme, rosemary and parsley. Then I have some, again, some sage and rosemary and thyme finely chopped with a stick or half a cup of unsalted butter that's been softened at room temperature. And you've got your bird! This is a 12 pound whole turkey, you want to make sure that the giblets, giblets, whatever you call them, they're all removed, they usually come in a pack right in there and you want to make sure that those are removed. So we've done that and this is the turkey. Now what I've done is I always rinse my turkey really well, you just want to make sure that you don't have your fountain turned on in your sink. Sometimes if you have a different nozzle, it kind of gets sprayed all over the place and you don't want that, you want to make sure that you do it really gentle and rinse it really well and pat it dry as best as you can because you're going to need that skin to be super, super dry in order to get it super, super crispy. Okay, to my butter and my herbs, I'm going to season them with some salt and pepper because this is going to be what we're going to rub the whole turkey down with in between the skin and on top, all over the place. So go ahead and give that a mash and I do want to point out that yes, I'm making my turkey in a foil tin, this is just a foil roaster, it's so easy for me around this time of year to feel a little overwhelmed with all the dishes and pots and all that stuff, so if I can take a little shortcut and save myself a little bit of stress, I do and that's something I've always told you about, use foil containers as much as you can, it will make your life so much easier. That is looking mighty fine. Okay, bring this baby over to me, by the way at this point you want to make sure your oven is preheated to 450F, get that completely ready and now I'm just going to pat this dry a little bit more, but I think for the most part we did a pretty good job. Okay, set that back there, I'm going to take, it actually works a lot better if I don't use it on my counter, I'm going to take this butter and I'm going to put most of it, I'm going to run my fingers right down the skin right there, you don't want to poke the skin, but you just want to loosen it a bit and you're going to take some of the butter, a little bit falls in there, it's all good, and put that right in there. What that's going to do, when the butter melts, all of that delicious flavor is going to seep right into the meat and it's going to keep it deliciously moist and give it fantastic flavor. And at this point, if you want to add a grating of lemon zest, orange zest, some clementine zest, by all means, I mean go ahead and do that because it's going to taste absolutely delicious. Then I just go ahead and I push this butter all underneath the skin, just to make sure everything is going to be beautiful, and if you're going to go in there with your hands, go in there with your hands. It's a dirty job. It's a messy job. And then you just take the rest and you smear it all over the whole turkey. This is not only going to give you great flavor, but the butter is going to give you a gorgeous, gorgeous color as well. So go ahead and take the rest of it and smear it all over the place and you want to make sure that you coat the thighs and the legs and the wings. What you're going to need to do is tuck your wing right under there as well so that nothing burns. Now, when I got my turkey, it already like, they kind of tucked in the legs under the skin. If it didn't have that right here, just take a piece of kitchen twine and tie the legs together for even baking, even roasting. I'm just going to wash up because I've got butter all over my hands and then we're going to get going on... Actually, I could probably do this now, I don't even need to wash up because it's all going in the turkey anyway. I'm going to take my herbs, stuff them in there. Talk about flavor. And if any of them fall out, that's the idea because you want those pan juices to have fabulous flavor. I've got some apple in there. The apple's really nice and sweet and it's going to give that sort of, because there's cider, there's going to be cider in the glaze, it's like a hue to the cider. It's fabulous. I've got my carrots, just the traditional aromatics, lots of onions, and I'm going to scatter all these vegetables around the pan as well. And there's some celery, just going to take some more of the apples and the onion, I'm going to stuff them right in there in the neck part because that just gives you good flavor. We want good flavor. And then you take the rest and scatter them around. And I'm not adding any oil or anything because it's going to give a lot of fat. The turkey juices are going to render and you've got all that butter in there, so trust me when I tell you, you don't need any extra fat. Okay, I'm just going to wash up because we are going to season this bad boy and pop it right into the oven. Freshly ground black pepper all over this bad boy. And then a good amount of salt because you're roasting, you know, a 12 pound turkey so you want to make sure it's seasoned really, really well and we did use unsalted butter, so keep that in mind. Okay, now, this is the part you must remember, 450 degrees for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, you're going to turn the heat down to 350 and cook it for 1 hour and 45 minutes. So, 20 minutes at 450, turn the heat down to 350 and cook it for an hour and 45 minutes. After an hour and 45 minutes, after 50, I'll show you what it looks like and we'll get going on making the glaze, which is really like the cherry on the sundae, or in this case, the cherry on the turkey, or the glaze on the turkey. I'm having too much fun today! I've got to get this in. Time to make the apple cider glaze that's going to go on top of it. What I have here is some apple cider and this is from a local orchard that we went to, so it's really good stuff. I'm going to add a little bit of brown sugar to that and I'm going to cook this together on about medium heat for a good 10-12 minutes or so or until the apple cider has reduced by half. That's going to be the sweet spot. Just make sure you don't let this boil too high of a boil. Just keep it nice and gentle and let this boil until it's reduced by half and also get some butter ready. I've got a half a stick of, sorry, a half a cup of butter here that I'm going to just cut into little pieces because I'm going to add a little bit at a time in there. My cider mixture has reduced by half beautifully, so now what I'm going to do is little by little add one tablespoon of butter and whisk that in because you just want to make sure you do this one at a time so that you emulsify everything together and you don't get sort of that split butter and cider. You want everything to emulsify together and you're just going to continue to do this until you've used up all of your butter. My turkey came out of the oven, now remember it was in there for 20 minutes at 450, turned the oven down to 350 and it cooked for an hour and 45 minutes and then we have our glaze which is really more of a glaze and sauce, it's a little bit on the runnier side but if it was too thick it would kind of burn off right away and also I want it to be a little runny because I want some of that glaze to run down into the juices so when I make my gravy it's sweet and savory and it's phenomenal and I am just pouring this beauty all over my bird, look at that, it's going to be glorious I tell you and all of those juices are going to end up being the gravy. Now this has to go back into the oven for another hour or so, you're going to want this to cook fully, in about an hour I will show you what it looks like but you're looking for the internal temperature of the fattest part of the turkey around this area right here to reach about 170 degrees Fahrenheit and then you're going to let this cool quite a bit but I'm going to pop this into the oven and every 15 minutes for the next hour I want you to come in here and just baste it with all those lovely juices, it's going to be phenomenal, so you're going to do this about 4-5 times or until your bird is fully cooked. So once I poured my glaze all over the turkey, I put it in the oven and I just took a little ladle and basted it every 15 minutes or so and it continued to roast for about an hour and 15 minutes or until the internal temperature of the thickest part of the bird reached 170 degrees. Now what I've done is I've taken the turkey out of the roasting pan and it's been sitting here resting, I got rid of the vegetables, they did their job and then I took all the juices and I put it in a fat separator, now what I'm going to do, you can clearly see the turkey juices are on the bottom and the fat is on the very top, a little tiny bit of fat right over here which I'm going to pour into, that's about it, into my little pan here because I'm going to make a roux, but then I'm going to take all the juices out into right here and you can see pretty much this is all the fat, now don't worry I did not throw away the vegetables, my husband and my cousin are eating the vegetables because it's their favorite part and I don't like to throw anything out. So, in this little skillet, in this little saucepan here, I'm going to add just a couple tablespoons of the fat and a couple tablespoons of flour and I'm just going to cook this together for about a minute or until it's cooked for about a minute so that the raw flour taste kind of goes away, but just make sure that you stir this the entire time because you don't want anything to burn and you want to get rid of those big lumps of flour. So, just go ahead and do it for about a minute. Don't worry if that kind of clumps up, just pour in your turkey juices and then just whisk this all together and cook it until the flour kind of all melts into your juices and it creates a really nice thick gravy. Gravy is ready and it's nice and smooth, if you want yours thicker, by all means add in a bit more flour, but that's perfect for me and I've got a little something extra over here. Now, you need to make sure that your turkey has rested for a good amount of time, otherwise it can end up being a huge, huge mess and now I'm going to go ahead and carve it. I'm not a chef, this is the easiest way to carve turkey in my opinion or chicken or anything like that, so I'm going to just show you my way. What I do first, because you can see the wings just come right off, now some people don't eat the wings, I think those people are crazy and I don't think you need that kind of negativity in your life, so get rid of those people. Then I work on the leg part. Now I need to cut this piece of skin that tied the legs together, which is now gorgeously crispy and if you just wiggle your knife, I mean you can see it's cooked so beautifully, look at that! It should really fall off the bone and what I have here is this huge cutting board that kind of is like a cutting board in a tray, which I really like because it helps catch all the juices and you'll feel where it kind of disconnects, like so, and then I go ahead and I cut the thigh off the drumstick, just like so, and there is your beautiful drumstick and this is your thigh. Now I do take this piece and I cut that right off and then go ahead and do exactly the same thing to this one and you can see by doing that, by cutting the whole dark meat together, you really have little to absolutely no waste whatsoever and a little bit of this is going to be great for leftovers tomorrow. So we're just going to do the exact same thing on this side. Now for the breast, you can do one of two things and I'm going to show you both ways. The first way, which is my favorite way, I cut along the backbone, okay, and you'll start to see or feel, I should say, where the backbone is and when you see or feel that, you kind of just cut right against that bone and just really try to make sure that you don't get rid of any of that crispy skin. Just take the whole breast off, it's the easiest way and I mean look at that, you have absolutely hardly anything left on the bone and it's just, in my opinion, it is the best way to cut off the breast. Then what I do is I take this baby and then this ensures that everybody gets a little bit of crispy skin and I just cut big, thick slices like so. I'm just going to take that and I like to just fan this ever so lightly because I'm going to pour a little bit of gravy on this to keep it nice and moist. Okay, now the second way that you can cut a breast is really the traditional way, which is just, I don't even know if you can see this well, but I need to do this this way, is to use a fork, I'd much rather use my fingers, is just to cut thin slices like so and fan them on your platter. Now because patience is just not one of my virtues in life and because I do prefer giving my guests nice, thick slices, I just cut the whole breast off, I cut a couple slices there and then cut the rest off and fan it on the platter. Now this is all I'm going to put on my serving platter for tonight because I'm taking some of these pieces and I'm going to grab all the meat off the bone and I'm going to make a great leftover recipe tomorrow to share with you, but now something I think is kind of crucial if you're not serving this right away is to put a little bit of gravy on the white meat and this is really just to keep it nice and moist, that's it, you don't want to pour too, too much, but just a little bit to keep things moist until you're ready to serve this. But that is it! It's a really easy, foolproof way to carve your turkey, just do me a favor, wait a good like half an hour because this as you can see is still steaming and my hands are burning because they're so hot, but I wanted to carve it while it was still nice and hot so you could see how beautiful it looks, how easy it was, and I'm going to take this piece right here, I'm going to dunk it in a pot of gravy, and I'm going to eat it. It's sweet from the glaze, the herbs and the butter kind of really went into that white meat, it's absolutely delicious, go to LauraintheKitchen.com to get this recipe, I hope you've enjoyed spending time with me, and if you do make this for Thanksgiving or Christmas, make sure you tag me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram because I want to see how it looks on your serving platter. I hope you've enjoyed spending time with me and I'll see you next time, bye bye!