Gobblers

My friends and I have a tradition. It's called Friends' Thanksgiving, and it started when I was a junior in college. We were going home for the Thanksgiving holiday, and we decided that this holiday was about spending time sharing food with the people you love. So, we invited all of our friends to the apartment. My roommates made various things that I can't remember right now; I made my first turkey.

Now, fourteen years later (I think that's right) I made my fourteenth Friends' Thanksgiving turkey. I've hosted that other, more widely known Thanksgiving at my house, too, so I'm guessing I'm up to about twenty turkeys total for large groups. I think for only being 34, that's pretty good.

For the past couple of years, I've gotten the this-is-the-best-turkey-ever complements. So, I feel some pressure to produce a good bird now. I wish I could take the credit for it, but it's really the most dummy-proof recipe ever.

1) Brine the bird the night before. This is not a hard step. I put it in a 5 gallon bucket that used to have spackle in it. We washed it out, and now it's affectionatly called the Brining Bucket. I put about a cup of kosher salt, 1/2 a cup of brown sugar, and some all spice and peppercorn berries into it. Bring the salt and brown sugar together in some hot water, the add the all spice and pepper corns. After, put that in the bucket, put the turkey in, and then cover the rest of the turkey with cold water. Put it in the fridge over night.

2) Take the turkey out of the brine and rinse it off to get all the all spice and pepper corn that will inevitably be stuck to it.

3) Put it in a turkey bag.

4) Rub about two tablespoons of butter under the skin, right on top of the breast. I don't worry about if it's in a big lump. It's butter. It will melt.

5) Stuff some apples and onions and herbs in the turkey butt. It will like it.

6) Now, here's the key (I think). Use a thermometer. Get rid of that pop-up thing. We've all heard of carry-over. Well, that pop-up thing pops when the bird is done. If you wait for it to pop up, well, carry over will bring your turkey to over done. Set the thermometer to go off at 161. I'm not sure why that one degree. It's a WWAD (what would alton do?) thing that I do.

7) Close up your bag and put it in a 350 degree oven.

Then, you wait. This is the hard part, because I never know how long it's going to take.

You can decide once your timer goes off if you want to brown it up. I tend not to because I don't think people NEED to be eating more turkey skin and I'm not into the whole unvailing presentation part of it. So, my turkey's ugly, but it tastes yummy.

Once it comes out, leave the darn thing alone for a while. I'm talking like thirty minutes at least. It's fricken huge; it's not going to get cold. Heat up your other stuff. Make your gravy. But, for the love of Alton, leave it alone!

That's it. Next year, I promise to take pictures and to make this a more...funny?...story. Here's the nitty gritty. Next year, we'll get into the fun.