No, I’m not talking about presidential candidates. I’m talking about the real deal. The flightless bird that was almost our country’s national bird.
Every year I prepare our turkey the way my parents did while I was growing up. And every year I tell myself I’m never going to do it again. Because it’s a great deal of work. Then I eat it on Thanksgiving afternoon, and I admit that I can never go back to the old way.
Here is what you do, generally speaking.
First you thaw the turkey in cold water. You have to time it just right. To long and you either have a turkey you have to throw out, or you have salmonella. To short and you have freezing hands.
Next you remove the legs and the wings. It’s a little gross, because you basically have to rip the bones out of their sockets, and then cut them away. Then you cut the breast meat away from the bone. When you’re done you have a de-boned turkey. The skin in on the bottom, all the raw meat is sitting on top.
Then you cut the bones out of the thighs, and place both of these next to the main pile of meat.
Now you spice it all with season salt, garlic salt, poultry seasoning, salt and pepper. Then you take the thighs and place them, skin up, on top of the other raw meat.
Now comes the fun part. You sew the whole thing back together. You plug up any holes, You sew the thighs to the main part, and just before you seal her up, you throw in an entire cube of butter. By the time you’re done you look like you have some kind of Frankenstein’s monster, minus…well, everything. It’s just a blob of turkey skin filled with meat.
Now you tie this up, put some onions on the bottom of a turkey bag, place the turkey in the bag, put in a quart and a half of water, more spices, and cook for 6 hours at about 325.
The end result is the moistest turkey you’ll ever eat. The butter melts inside of the turkey, the spices run all over the place, when it comes out of the oven, you cut the thread, throw out the skin, and eat until you can’t eat no more.
Anyway, I’ve got the turkey blob in the fridge now. It was a lot of work, but I can already taste it.
Happy Thanksgiving.
