Your Turkey

aguyindallas · **Posted:** Wed Nov 23, 2011 10:01 pm

I know....breaking the rules, but let's talk turkey!

230 Mike · **Posted:** Thu Nov 24, 2011 12:26 am

I'd like to try frying one, but I figure between the $25 worth of oil and the cost of a new deck after burning the current one down, I could put that money into the boat.

298VISTA2000 · **Posted:** Thu Nov 24, 2011 6:50 pm

I voted for oven-cooked but neither my wife nor I have ever had to cook a turkey because we have older brothers and sisters who do all that. However, we just got back from my sisters and she cooked this year's turkey in a cheap $50 roaster and it was one of the most moist turkeys I have ever had. Might be a good idea for the boat if you have a gen because you can cook many types of food in these roasters.

Winter Sux · **Posted:** Thu Nov 24, 2011 8:37 pm

A great post!!! I have one of those roasters and we use it aboard. It works great for all kinds of cooking.

here's my turkey recipe if anyones interested,,,

prepare your bird as always,,
Just prior to putting in oven, stab a bunch of holes in the breast with a fork,,
Lay bacon strips over all the holes and pop it in the oven, covered,,
Uncover 3/4 through oven time to let it brown,,
No need to baste cuz the bacon does it for you leaving more drinkin/tellin boating stories time for you.

ric · **Posted:** Thu Nov 24, 2011 10:03 pm

I hate turkey. Ate curry chicken and rice.

<----1/3 English/Norweigen/Canadian white man.

wkearney99 · **Posted:** Sun Nov 27, 2011 4:01 pm

Fried? No, you mean DEEP FRIED!

I did three 20lbs birds on Thanksgiving and then another two on Friday (14 and 9lbs).

20lb bird takes 45 minutes. The 9lb one took 20.

$25 for oil would be cheap. I only use peanut oil and that stuff's gotten expensive of late. Had to resort to buying individual gallons at the local supermarket. None of my previous places (costco, home depot, target) had 100% peanut oil in the larger 3 gallon sizes. Most were mixes of soybean, canola or (ick) cottonseed oil. I've found for the money you're going to have to spend it's a much better plan to get pleanit oil and do up to 6 birds. Peanut oil seems to have the best resistance to picking up and transferring flavors or tasting burned. Canola barely got me through 3 birds the one time I tried using it.

I usually only do two birds on Thanksgiving. One with traditional flavors and the other cajun style. Both get brined for several days ahead of time and then injected the day before. This provides a bird so perfectly flavored as to not need to put anything like salt or cranberry sauce. Which we still make, just less of it than we would with an oven roasted bird.

I've even done a direct comparison of a Butterball, Shadybrook Farms and a free-range organic bird; all the same weight. The Butterball had more white meat but was pretty bland. The Shadybrook had less white meat but a bit better flavor. The organic bird was hands-down tastier and had much better texture. It was about in-between the other two regarding amount of white meat. The difference being $15 for a supermarket birds and upwards of $65 for the organic. Since this a once-a-year tradition, and I'm already spending that much (or more) on oil, it's worth the extra money. But even the Butterball done this way still ends up being A LOT tastier than oven roasted.

A friend at dinner proclaimed he might never be able to eat regular turkey again. I concur.

The only downsides (besides the cost of oil) are you don't get drippings for gravy and you can't stuff it. For gravy I usually just roast the necks and giblets from the birds and use those drippings. For stuffing we've found a great many other ways to fix it that are probably even tastier that what you'd get from a stuffed bird.

I've done this for over a decade now and can't imagine going back to regular roasting. It's WORTH the expense and then some.

www.iFourWinns.com

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