Jack And Sues Best Turkey Yet Recipe

How to make it

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• Preparation
• Clean out the inside, removing the neck, gizzard, heart, & liver. Trim off some of the fat from the hind end of the bird. Save it all for the stock.
• It's important to clean the bird really well. Notice how the water from your sprayer foams up like soap suds when you spray it into the bird. It foams for a long time. This is because of the residue of the "keep fresh" surfactants and the anti microbial stuff the processors dip the turkey in. It sticks to the turkey really good, just like it's designed too! If you didn't get your bird from a poultry farm, or shoot it yourself, it will have this stuff on and in it.
• If you don't get this stuff off, cooking will cause it to permeate the skin & the meat. Heat will cause this stuff to break down the cell walls of the meat, with the resulting loss of moisture, bad textural changes, dry meat, and toughness. This stuff will also interfere with something called the Maillard reaction. That's the all important process that browns the skin and the bits in the bottom of the roaster. Brown crispy skin is not very permeable. It's kind of like an organic Gortex. It lets some water vapor out, but not liquid water or fat. Brown skin looks good, tastes good, and keeps the meat moist. Brown bits in the roaster bottom are absolutely essential to the taste and color of the gravy.
• You really need to clean the bird good even if you are going to brine it. Brining a bird with this stuff on the turkey (thus in the brine water) will speed up and complete the spread of it into the skin and meat. It'll be carried into the cells by the same osmotic process that carries the spices and salt.
• Dry it really well, and salt & pepper the inside. Use kosher salt.
• I stuff the bird. Stuffing is traditional. I like stuffing cooked in the bird. Birds cook better with the stuffing in them. Stuffing is a major heat sink for keeping the bird temperature increase steady. If you use common sense like no eggs in the stuffing, really clean hands & utensils, boiled stock, cooking immediately after stuffing, and monitoring the stuffing temperature, it's no problem. Since you need to taste it while you're making it to get the spices right, just don't put anything in it you can't eat raw. If you use common sense, you are more likely to be killed by a meteor than by your bread stuffing. Think about it. If you are too stupid to make stuffing that won't kill you, then, hey, that's Darwin's theory being vindicated.
• Bread stuffing is my preference, and that's the recipe. You can use corn bread, or any variation of bread stuffing. Fully cooked smoked or cured sausage is good to add. I wouldn't use any of that Gloucester fisherman style stuffing with fish parts or shellfish in it. Fishy stuff rots quick even after it's cooked! I bet that's what started all this "stuffing will kill you" BS.
• Bring the stock ( from the boiled and reduced inards) with one stick of butter to a boil.
• Sweat the celery and onions in one stick of butter. Don't brown them.
• In a large bowl, combine the hot stock, the celery/onion mix and the bread and spices. You need to taste it to get the spices the way you like them. Don't just put all the stock in at once. You want a very moist mixture. Do.. Not.. Over.. Mix! We don't want to turn this stuff into paste. We want wet bread cubes.
• Immediately stuff the neck section of the bird, and pin the flap over it with a skewer. Stuff the cavity, pin it shut, and truss the legs together.
• Immediately coat the whole bird liberally with canola oil. Salt and pepper well. Use coarse flaked Kosher salt. Regular table salt and sea salt contains iodine. I don't want to have to explain what iodine does to the skin of a cooking bird! Flaky salt sticks to the bird's skin better.
• Immediately after stuffing roast it on the lowest level of the oven at 500 degrees F for 30 minutes. This very quickly starts the skin browning process, which is one of the essential things that keeps the meat moist. After 30 minutes, lower the temp to 350 F. Remove from oven and cover the main part of the bird with a double layer of aluminum foil. I insert one probe thermometer into thickest part of the breast and one into the stuffing cavity. Wrap the wing ends with foil. Return to oven. Set the thermometer alarms to 161 degrees. An 18 to 20 pound bird should require a total of about 4.5 to 5.5 hours total. Ovens vary, so blah, blah, blah. Remove the bird to a carving board. Remove the stuffing immediately. Let turkey rest, loosely covered for ~20 minutes before carving.