Jallie's Baked Beanz

Every Christmas, my company gives all its employees a turkey and some type of item with the company logo on it. 2005 was a coffee thermos. Previous years employee gifts included an umbrella and cooler. I was so surprised, having only worked for DCVS for a few months, that I'd be gifted with such awesome stuff!

The turkey sat in my freezer, taking up John's valuable frozen pizza space, for over 9 months. I didn't want to wait for Thanksgiving to cook this bird up, so it came out of the freezer last week to defrost.

I had experience cooking a turkey once before and I followed the "America's Test Kitchen" method of brining it overnight. I found a few turkey cooking recipes from the Food Network and combined parts of a few of them. Here's the finished product:

I know... it looks like a chicken on that little platter and nothing else next to it for size reference. All my large platters are at other peoples' houses. It was almost 14 pounds.

The brine is from Emeril's recipe for Brined and Roasted Turkey and the cooking part is Emeril combined with Giada's Turkey with Herbes de Provence and Citrus. All kinds of bojangling of recipes here!!!

After brining overnight, I took the turkey out the next morning and rinsed/dried as specified. I salted and peppered the inside and stuffed it with carrots, celery, onions, orange, thyme and bay leaves. Then I tied it up and put it in the oven. This is where I borrowed a bit from both recipes.

The first time I made turkey, I cooked it according to Giada's recipe, which calls for roasting the turkey with the breast side up for the duration. The legs (thighs) weren't as cooked through as they should have been, so I started this one breast side down and flipped it over about an hour through cooking.

Basically, I don't think it matters whether you cook it on one temperature the whole time through or start at a high temp and lower it. As long as you keep broth of some type in the pan so the drippings don't burn, baste it every half hour and make sure it comes to the proper internal temperature, I think your turkey will turn out yummy.

I probably won't salt the turkey as much on the outside next time. All that salt falls into the pan drippings. Although the gravy I made from the broth/drippings was really good, I think I'd like it to be a little less salty. The meat, having been brined, didn't need the extra salt. I might actually cut the salt in the brine a bit too. Using a low sodium chicken broth was a plus as well.

The actual "cooking" part of this turkey was pretty easy. It's figuring out how to contain two gallons of brine and a turkey in something that will fit into the fridge that was the problem. The first time, it was freakin' cold out, so I put the turkey in a doubled up trash bag (make sure it's not the fancy "odor shield" kind!) and put it in a cooler. We put the cooler outside overnight. The bag method was used again, but this time, the bottom drawer of the fridge was employed as the container. We took it off the sliding shelf bracket (took out the shelf) so it would rest directly on the bottom of the fridge.

When I went to prep the turkey for roasting the next day, it took me almost an hour to rinse, dry, stuff and season it. But all turned out well. Happy Turkey Day!