A Perfect(ly Good) Turkey Recipe

It's just going to be my dad, my mom, and me this Thanksgiving. That might lead you to wonder whether it's really worth all the fuss of cooking a whole Thanksgiving dinner for just three people. I reject this line of thinking, partly because I'm in the habit of cooking all day for just two people, and that's in celebration of nothing much in particular. But also because I think that a Thanksgiving that's short on personnel needs to make up for it in holiday cheer, which means plenty of cooking, eating, music, parade-watching, and of course alcoholic beverages.

My plan for Thursday is to cook just enough to keep me busy throughout the afternoon but not so much as to be exhausting. I'll do turkey of course, traditional stuffing, a brussels sprout dish, and a butternut squash dish. I'm buying our pumpkin pie from 'wichcraft - I know what you're thinking, but they're inexpensive and at least as good as anything I would make (using fresh Greenmarket pumpkin, no less) so I'm not ashamed about outsourcing this.

Of all the dishes served on Thanksgiving, it is without a doubt the turkey that provokes the most angst among cooks.

Maybe that's because the turkey is the only thing that nearly all Thanksgiving tables share in common, or maybe because it's the centerpiece of the meal, or maybe just because turkeys can be so incredibly bad when overcooked. At any rate, it's a funny-looking bird to get so upset about.

The questions circulating around turkey cookery are endless and terribly specific, as if proper cooking them is like a geometry proof and one foul digit can ruin the whole thing. Should you brine? Dry brine or wet brine? For how long? What brining solution should you use? If you brine it, can you stuff it? What temperature should you cook the turkey at at? For how long? Should you use a rub? How about a glaze? How often should you baste? Should you rotate it in the oven?

I'd imagine that if you care deeply about the quality of your roasted turkey you've probably already consulted multiple cookbooks and magazines as well as poring over Google search results to the query "the perfect turkey." There's no shortage of material out there about cooking a Thanksgiving turkey, and I'm sure that I'm not going to provide you with any original insight here.

So this one goes out to everybody else: the folks who mainly just want to roast a turkey that might be a pleasant surprise to the naysaying family and friends with takeout Chinese on speed dial.

After doing a fair amount of research and realizing that I was creating more questions for myself than I answered, I finally just spoke to one of the chefs de cuisine at our restaurant company to see what he recommended. His advice is below. It's not revolutionary, nor is it probably the Ultimate, Indisputable Best Turkey Recipe Out There. I know that it's somehow more fun to think that it requires a rigorous rotation schedule, temperature variation, and secret rub ingredients to unlock the code to A Great Turkey, but what's below will get you to the dinner table with minimal fuss and maximal results.

A quick word about brining. Brining is when you use a salt/sugar/water bath to make the turkey more tender and moist by witchcraft osmosis. I've heard many impassioned arguments in favor of brining and no persuasive reasons against it, other than the obvious one that most of us have better things to do than worrying about submersing a 20 lb carcass in a water bath the day before Thanksgiving. If you have the time and inclination to brine then by all means. But at the risk of inflaming all those brine advocates out there...you can skip the brining step without seriously damaging your turkey cookery. Update: I just got a persuasive argument against brining from my boss. He says that that brining dries out the meat and that what people are responding to when they say it's "moist" is the fact that the meat is thoroughly seasoned. Instead, season under the skin and in the cavity well with salt and pepper.

For those that might be interested: this year I got a wild turkey, from Quattro Farm in Pleasant Valley, New York. The main reasons for this decision were a) after seeing Food, Inc. and reading every Michael Pollan book this year, I could not conscience buying an industrially produced turkey and b) the little guy only weighs 7-8 lbs, perfect for a small Thanksgiving gathering. I'll let you know how it goes.

A Perfectly Good Thanksgiving Turkey Recipe

Start with high quality turkey. The biggest single factor in how good your Thanksgiving turkey tastes is what type of animal you start with. It's too late at this point to special order a turkey from a local farm but you should consider it next year (you should get your order in by mid-October). In the New York area, Quattro's Game Farm, Stone Barns, and Dickson's Farmstand Meat all sell turkeys. If you're going the grocery store route, try to get a bird that's been raised pastured (cage-free) without antibiotics, hormones, or other additives. The turkey will have a much richer, fuller flavor.

Separate the legs from the turkey. The legs and breast take different amounts of time to cook, so they need to be cooked apart. I know that this ruins the table-presentation flourish of a whole turkey. Get over it.

Prep the breast and cavity. Rub the turkey with salt, pepper, and butter, both on top of and underneath the skin. Let it come to room temperature before going in the oven. Fill the cavity with stuffing, if desired.

Braise the legs. Put a little oil in a dutch oven over medium high heat and brown the legs. Then remove the legs and add chopped carrot, onion, celery, garlic, and a couple of sprigs of thyme. Let those soften, and then add a little bit of white wine to deglaze the pan (read: loosen the brown bits). Add back the legs and enough chicken stock to partially cover them. Keep covered and at a low simmer until the legs register 165 degrees.

Roast the breast. 325 degrees is a good oven temperature. Roast the breast until it hits an internal temperature of 165 (a pop-up poultry timer lodged in the bird's breast is set to pop at 180 degrees, at which point a turkey is already dried out and overcooked, so do not rely on that), basting occasionally.

And that's it! Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving.