My mother taught me early on there are some foods one should never order in a restaurant: meatloaf, lasagna, roast turkey...you get the idea. Basically anything your mom makes so well at home it would just be a disappointment in both taste and childhood memory to eat and then pay for. And my mom (as most moms do) makes the best turkey. This is because her mom makes the best turkey. Their secret is simple: slather the sucker with butter, salt, pepper, tightly foil wrap and cook low 'n' slow. I once researched their method and, according to the Poultry Council, their method should have killed us a long time ago. Oddly enough it wasn't that info that swayed me to change their process. It was Ina and her recipe for roasted turkey. Go figure.
I dry brined the turkey a day in advance, combining the following tips, techniques and tastes:
YouTube Dry Brine
NY Times Dry Brine
Food Network Dry Brine
Then I followed Ina's recipe here:
Ina's Empty Promises of Perfect Turkey
I substituted a couple sticks of butter for the truffle butter. Yeah, you read that right-a couple sticks. Everything's better with butter. I even once shoved butter inside hamburger patties (thanks for the tip, Paula!). Ina swears that butter under the skin keeps it juicy.
Then, in order to free my oven for sausage stuffed mushrooms (recipe here), mashed potatoes (made with cream cheese, butter and sour cream!) and roasted butternut squash, I roasted the turkey, sans foil, in my electric roaster (method here). This is where it went wrong. The turkey came out flavorful, as the gravy revealed. Must have been that onion, garlic and thyme shoved into the turkey. And the dry brine; that's the way to go! But juicy it was not. Not dry, just not as fall off the bone as the foil wrapped low 'n' slow process of my mom's. What a dissapointment!!!! I was so upset with myself all during dinner for thinking I could improve a meal that didn't need improving. I'm also mad at Ina for tempting me to stray with her promises of turkey perfection. Maybe you think I'm being harsh and/or dramatic, but with the amount of butter and other fats I use in the above menu, I only eat it once a year. Now I have to wait a really long time (like a decade in stomach years) to do it all over, but no changing a classic next time.
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| Roasted Butternut Squash is a great alternative to sickly sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top. Hmm, that actually sounds pretty good. |
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| Ina suggests serving sausage stuffed mushrooms instead of stuffing, which dries out the bird. These were the HIGHLIGHT of the meal. They'd also make a great appetizer. |
