Why You Need This Guide
There’s a lot of stress and uncertainty when it comes to cooking the Thanksgiving turkey. This is only heightened when it’s a high-quality, pastured turkey, rather than a bargain bin bird grabbed from the supermarket meat case. But it does not have to be intimidating. However you want to cook it, whole, spatchcocked, or in pieces, brined or unbrined, my aim here is to give you a complete, detailed description of how to get a great result.
Thawing Your Pastured Turkey
If you buy a turkey from us or another small farm, chances are it will be frozen on arrival. This means it must be thawed fully and safely. Notice that the linked article appears on the website of a company that happens to make the best thermometers in the world. Some of these are very fancy and cost quite a lot, but you don’t need any of these. The Thermopop does everything you need at a reasonable price. While you can find cheaper digital thermometers, in my experience they are far less reliable.
(Pastured) Turkey Theory
So now you have a good thermometer, which you have used to thaw your pastured turkey, but it will also let you roast it to perfection. A well raised pastured turkey has superior flavor to a conventional bird, but the goals in cooking it are the same. It should not need any unique preparation, unless you are used to cooking pre brined/self-basting turkeys.
Before we put the turkey in the oven, let’s take a step back and get some perspective.
Turkeys are the largest thing most of us ever cook. They are oddly shaped. Further, we are trying to roast them at different rates – we’re aiming for somewhere in the neighborhood of 155 for the breast meat, while we want the legs well north of 170. Some of us want other things, like crispy skin and perhaps the possibility of making a pan gravy, but the first consideration has to be cooking the meat well.
When you insist on roasting a turkey whole, you are fighting against nature. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it necessarily comes with compromises.
Iconoclasm, Practicality, or Tradition?
People try all sorts of things, like putting ice packs on the turkey breast, tenting it with foil, flipping it upside down, putting a preheated pizza stone beneath the roasting pan, and innumerable other tricks that aim to speed up the rate at which the legs cook relative to the breast meat.
Fancier chefs often spatchcock the turkey. This simply means removing the back while leaving the rest intact, which allows it to lay flat. Because this puts the legs are on the outside, they also cook faster than the breast, which means you can get everything closer to the right temperatures at about the same time.
But what if you want a whole, intact turkey? One interesting way that used to be popular was a slow, low roast, maybe even overnight. The benefit of a low temp roast is that the meat is theoretically less likely to dry out. Fears of pathogens caused this approach to decline in popularity, but these are mostly unfounded. Still, doing this safely assumes a properly calibrated oven and a lot of time. Personally, I wouldn’t try anything lower than a 225 degree oven.
I suspect most people want to stick the whole thing in the oven on Thanksgiving morning, even if this makes it harder to get an absolutely perfect result. This recipe is a good overview of a traditional approach.
To Brine or Not To Brine?
The recipe above uses a rather elaborate brine, with weird ingredients like chicken stock. With a pastured turkey this extra flavor should be unnecessary, so I’d recommend a more basic recipe like this one, with or without the wine. Roasting the whole, unaltered bird is the only situation in which a brine is really important. The extra moistness makes cooking much more forgiving, so one part of the turkey getting too hot doesn’t matter so much.
The downsides of brining are pan juices that are too salty for use in gravy and meat that has a slightly altered texture, which some people find off putting. If you do not want to brine your turkey, get your hands on some poultry shears and start spatchcocking. At the absolute minimum salt the thawed turkey beneath the skin a day before cooking.
Halfcocked Roast Turkey
Still, I’m left thinking that all of these approaches involve unnecessary compromise, particularly since the solution is so obvious – simply cut the legs and wings off the turkey. Roast them together, removing each as it reaches temperature. I call this a halfcocked turkey, and I’ve written a more in depth description of its hows and whys.
I Suppose You Have Strong Opinions About Gravy As Well?
I do!
While pan gravy has an appeal, it is not worth it. There are the risks of overly salty or burnt juices, and there is the high wire act of preparing the gravy while all the other dishes are slowly getting too cool. A better solution is to make a bunch of gravy ahead of time, then heat it up as needed. This recipe, using homemade rather than store bough stock if possible, is the way to go.
This Has All Been Interesting, But Can You Please Just Tell Me What To Do In a Reasonably Straightforward Manner?
Fine. If you just want to roast a whole, pastured turkey on Thanksgiving day, here’s what you should do:
1.) Buy this thermometer
2.) Thaw Your Turkey
3.) Cook according to this recipe using this brine.
4.) Make a bunch of gravy ahead of time.
5.) Cook stuffing in a separate pan.
Happy Thanksgiving!
