Pure Pressure

As most of you know, my step-dad passed away on Father’s Day this year and while it seems like time shouldn’t move forward without the people you love, it does.

Not only does it move forward, it brings the holiday season with it. And somewhere between missing him and trying to figure out how to carry on our traditions, November was on our doorstep and so was the realization that Pappy always cooked our Thanksgiving turkey.

What are we going to do?!

Luckily, and for no reason whatsoever, he sent me his turkey recipe last Thanksgiving – completely unprompted. We’ve somewhat taken that as a sign (while also volunteering) to cook the Thanksgiving turkey …which also just kind of makes sense, since we host it.

There’s just one problem — we’ve never cooked a turkey. Like ever.

Welcome to The Great Thanksgiving Turkey Takeover!

Gathering Our Thoughts

While we are so happy and excited to be able to keep the Thanksgiving turkey just as delicious as Pappy did; I’d be lying if I said we weren’t a little intimidated.

Sure, we have a recipe, but that’s just half the battle. You know how recipes are… they’re just the bones. The real flavor comes from little tweaks that aren’t written down; they live in the brain and in the hands of those who use them.

Here is the recipe he used!

Practice Makes Delicious …eventually

So earlier last week, we decided to test out our skills because the last thing we need to do is practice our turkey cooking skills the day before Thanksgiving.

And because this entire adventure deserved to be documented, here’s our first attempt at cooking Pappy’s turkey. Spoiler alert: we have some learning to do. 😂

We did everything perfectly and to the letter of the recipe; and then we remembered… he did a salt brine. We did not do that. Mistake number 1.

When we were finished and the turkey was fully cooked, we realized that following the recipe to the letter while not checking the internal temperature along the way, was mistake number 2. That thing was almost too dry to swallow.

We did one thing right though – the flavor! This recipe, although simple, gives great flavor. Plus, you can use the fruits and vegetables from the turkey and put that into your dressing which I’m 100% certain would be the move.

Even though we overcooked it and didn’t salt brine it, the final product was certainly pleasing to the eye! This is a picture of our first attempt:

The Feedback

After posting our first turkey cooking journey on social media, we received lots of tips – several that we can’t wait to try!

• Cook it in a bag
• Cook it breast side down so that the juices drain into the breast
• Cover it with foil for most of the cook time (which reminded us that that’s what Pappy did too!)
• Spatchcock it (also known as butterflying). This is where you cut the backbone out and press down on the breast bone (cracking it) so that it lays flat. This reduces the cooking time which means it has less time to dry out.
• Get a counter-top turkey roaster

Now, the roaster suggestion came from one of my best friends, who said her mother-in-law cooks hers in a roaster and she’s never had a more moist turkey in her life.

Naturally, after hearing that, we decided a countertop turkey roaster was absolutely necessary for our survival. So we ordered this one. Because apparently we’re the kind of people who buy an entire appliance after cooking one dry turkey (and if you know us, you know nothing could be more true).

What we’re trying next…

I’m most excited about trying the roaster and the spatchcock method.

Unfortunately, our roaster won’t be in until October 28th so we have to wait a bit for that one so I’d say spatchcocking will be next up – alongside adding in the salt brine.

My only concern is that spatchcocking it really does take away from the beautiful, golden Thanksgiving Day turkey aesthetic that honestly means way more to me than it should 😂.

I don’t know if we’ll ever make a turkey quite like Pappy did, but I think he’d get a pretty good kick out of watching us try.

We’d love to hear what you do that works so we can learn!