Someone gave me this turkey so that was nice to have a free turkey. I let him thaw out for three days. Some websites says not to rinse the bird due to a high risk of cross contamination but I was careful and I felt better if I could just rinse it. Plus there were a couple of feathers left or like the tips of feathers left in it. It was uh gross but I got through it. I took the neck, gizzards, and liver out and simmered them in a pot to the side for four hours with the ends of my celery, the parts of onions I wouldn't eat, two whole cloves of garlic, and I had a lot of basil left over from the week so that was my turkey stock. I used the turkey stock for my stuffing and my gravy.
I rubbed the inside down with cracked pepper and salt, half of a lemon for it's juice, quartered a sweet yellow onion, tops and bottoms of celery, two whole garlic cloves, a mixture of sage rosemary and basil, and I put a half a stick of butter inside of it. The outside I coated it with lemon juice, salt, cracked pepper, covered that thing with butter, and rosemary.
This is half way through the cooking process. We started it out on 425 for half an hour, 350 for two hours, and 255 for and hour and a half. I read a lot of website that said if we roasted it breast side down all the juices would go there so we did it that way. I put it on a double broiler so I could use the drippings for my gravy. I put foil on the bottom so it'd be easy for me to pour the oil into another pan. I tied the legs and the wings in (I feel like that's a given but just in case.) After the first half hour I realized I should have covered it with foil to maybe keep the juices in so I ended up covering it with foil half way through. I don't know if that made a difference
Ta-Da! My first turkey and it turned out awesome!
Can you tell I ended up switching to a better camera? ha
