Different Ways to Cook a Turkey, Along With Recipes

Each year, people across the country sit down around the table on Thanksgiving to eat turkey, one of America’s favorite festive birds. Although most of us are used to eating turkey that has been roasted in an oven, there are many different ways to cook a turkey that you might not know about. If you would like to test out a new way to prepare turkey this holiday season, try one of these 5 turkey cooking techniques.

1. Brining

Regardless of how you decide to prepare your turkey, one of the best ways to get a flavorful bird is to brine the turkey first. Brining adds moisture and flavor to the meat, preventing it from drying out. It takes anywhere from 10 to 24 hours to brine a turkey.

You’ll need a container large enough to hold your turkey and fully submerge it in brine, as well enough room to refrigerate the container. Brine is made with table salt dissolved in water and seasonings, such as herbs, garlic, honey, brown sugar, chili peppers, and molasses.

2. Oven Roasting

Oven roasting is by far the most popular way to cook turkey, but everyone has a different opinion about the best way to oven roast a turkey. The typical process of roasting a turkey consists of thawing the turkey, stuffing it, and sticking it into an oven for a few hours. Many people also elect to cook the stuffing separately rather than in the cavity so that the meat roasts more evenly and potential sanitary concerns are avoided.

Since the outcome of oven roasting can result in dry, stringy, and tasteless meat for the unpracticed cook, there are a number of methods to help ensure the turkey remains moist. Some people recommend deconstructing the turkey and roasting the parts separately to ensure that the white meat is as tender as the dark meat. Another option is to place the whole turkey into the oven when it is completely frozen and solid for a perfectly browned, tender, and moist bird.

Yet another alternative is to roast the turkey upside down, or in other words, breast-side down. When you cook a turkey breast-side down, the skin on the breast does not get too brown and the juices from the turkey moisten the breast while the turkey cooks.

Oven temperatures will vary, but should be set at no lower than 325° F. Cook times will also vary by size of bird, as well as whether or not the bird is stuffed. An unstuffed 16 to 20 pound turkey will take 5 to 5-1/2 hours to cook. The meat can be brined, seasoned or injected with marinades and can also be basted throughout the cooking process, in order to help to keep the bird moist.

3. Deep-frying

Deep-fried turkey has become popular in recent years because of its crispy texture and tender, delicious interior. However, stories abound of people who have started house fires or injured themselves by deep-frying turkeys at home.

Deep-frying a turkey over the stove can be dangerous, but you can use an electric fryer to minimize risks. When deep-frying a turkey, either use a fresh turkey or make sure that the turkey is completely thawed. Add peanut oil to a fryer, but do not exceed the maximum fill line. Preheat the oil in the fryer to 350° F. You should not stuff a turkey when deep-frying. Cook the stuffing separately.

Pat the turkey dry with paper towels and flavor it with seasonings, injections or marinades while the oil is heating. When the oil is heated, lower the turkey into the fryer and make sure that it is fully submerged. Cook it for 3.5 minutes per pound. When the turkey is done, slowly lift it from the pot and let it drain on paper towels.

4. Grilling

Grilling is not a traditional way to cook a turkey, but it creates a tender, juicy bird with a crisp exterior. Remove giblets from the turkey and stuff the cavity with onions, herbs, spices, lemon wedges, and vegetables. Tie the legs together with a kitchen string. Spread softened butter and salt and pepper on the turkey skin and place the turkey breast-side up on the grill in a rectangular metal or foil drip pan. Cover the grill and cook the turkey for 11 to 14 minutes per pound. Make sure you have plenty of additional charcoal and somewhere to light the coals off the grill. Continue brushing the turkey with melted butter or basting sauces to keep it moist while it cooks.

5. Smoking

Smoked turkey is tender and flavorful. It takes 30 to 40 minutes per pound to smoke a turkey. Avoid smoking too large of a turkey because it can increase the risk of food contamination. To smoke a turkey, you need a meat thermometer, smoker, and good hardwood. Hardwoods that add a nice flavor to smoked turkey include hickory, oak, cherry, and apple. Use a kettle grill as a smoker, and build a fire that holds a steady temperature of around 235° F. Plan on smoking the turkey for about 30 minutes per pound. Brine the turkey before smoking, and use dry rub or brush olive oil on the skin to give the meat more moisture and flavor.

While all of these Thanksgiving turkey tips can result in juicy, tender meat, no matter how you decide to cook your turkey, you will need to make sure the bird reaches an internal temperature of at least 165° F in order to be safe to eat (United States Department of Agriculture). Test the temperature of the turkey in two different places, but not too close to the bone, and let it rest for at least 15 minutes after it is done so that the juices can settle. Try one of these five different ways to cook a turkey today, and change up the taste of your turkey this Thanksgiving.

Recipe

http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/moms_roast_turkey/

 

Recipe

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1788640/roast-turkey-with-pecan-sausage-and-chestnut-stuff

 

Recipe

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1788639/italianstyle-turkey-crown-with-roast-garlic-and-

 

Recipe

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/995640/roast-turkey-with-sage-and-onion-butter-and-marsal

 

Recipe

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/4960/cider-roast-turkey

 

Recipe

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/8360/roast-turkey-with-chestnut-stuffing

Daily Prompt: ______ is the new ______

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/, DP, Daily Prompt

Clickover to your favorite blog, and pick out the…

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Daily Prompt: ______ is the new ______

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/, DP, Daily Prompt

Click over to your favorite blog, and pick out the 4th and 14th words (that aren’t “the” or “an”). Drop them into this phrase:

 

“_____ is the new _____.”

 

There’s your post title. Now write!

 

Photographers, artists, poets: show us BLANK.

I am not going to say which blog I went to. I do not have one favorite, I have many, so I just went eenie meenie mino mo.

The words are; struggled and colors.

Struggled is the new color.

Now this is some sentence to work with. Come on brain, get ticking. I sit here with squinted eyes, staring at the screen, scratching my head thinking.

Oh, well that didn’t take long. I am writing this prompt from my own view on my life.

Struggling with losing weight, not wanting to eat sweets, not wanting to exercise, not wanting to pull a way from my life on the computer, and smoking.

These are my worst struggles and if I should look at a nice new box of crayons I would say the color is somewhere between gray and black.

These are my nasty habits of life. Oh I am sure I have many more, but these are top-choice, prime beef and high rated.

What to do. The media causes me guilt. All of these topics are super sensitive to me because everyone around me is saying, You naughty girl. Shame, shame, shame.

This next statement makes me choke. I am going to go back and read what I wrote and I am going to see the next sentence staring in my face like a gun getting ready to go off.

I don’t want to change anything right now.

There I wrote it, yes, I read it back and it made me want to run for the hills, because guilt is now seeping into all my open crevices. Attacking my conscience and I was  having such a wonderful morning today.

I don’t want to work on these goals when Al is not here. I want to enjoy the computer and write until my fingers turn black. I want to skip the basic food groups and just grab a quickie. I don’t want to waste one moment of time I  have for alone time.

I do get some exercise, I can’t say I am 100% bad. I do laundry. I scrub toilets and tubs. I push Al in his wheelchair daily. I cook and sweep floors. I use my arms and hands to steady Al’s weight whenever he transfers. I sweep dead leaves from the ramp daily so we don’t slip and I fall and while I am down I am watching Al go racing down the ramp. Oh wow, that sentence gives me the shivers. Watch out! Incoming run-a-way wheelchair.

As for my weight, I lost one hundred pounds a few years back, and I just teeter on the totter on the scales. One week I gain a pound the next week I lose it. I will eat sweets, but I do it differently today than I used to.

Now I take one bite, two at the most and stick it in the trash can. I tasted it, I thrilled from it. I screamed with delight. Before, I would have eaten the entire sweet. I also rarely use an adult dinner plate when I eat. I use the medium size. My plate looks full but my mind is fooled. This is a hard one to pull off because rarely does my mind get tricked.

The smoking issue, well that is a dead ringer for it ain’t gonna happen right now. I have tried before because deep inside I really do want to quit. But each time I tried to stop, when I went back, I smoked more. If I continue to keep trying when I don’t want to quit right now, I will be smoking a carton a day.

So I am putting that off. Stress and sadness and  the fact my brother is so ill, is a reason for me to continue smoking for now. So that is case closed, door slammed, and no arguments from me for now.

Saturday my internet shut down. There was a message I had never seen before. It was yadda, yadda, yadda, but all I could see was I didn’t have my computer. With suggestions from my daughter, I turned it off safely.

I waited a while and tried turning it on again only to hear this ticking sound. Louder than any clock. I turned it off again and waited longer. My daughter then got on here and turned it back on and it was like she is in the wrong business. She had it up and running.

The fact is when you think of something long enough, it does happen. I have been pondering on my computer. It is five years old. I did have it rebuilt and updated this past January, but nothing last forever, right? So there, I cursed myself. I thought about it too long and then it messed up on me. I don’t know how in the world I will ever go without my computer.

It is my life, my silly string to the outside world. It allows me to chat with so many, continue to heal through my writing. And the friends I have made, is just so Wow, Wow, I couldn’t give any of this up. I would just need a tower but that is probably the most expensive piece and as far as prices I want a tough one, not a generic one, so I better start saving my pennies.

Well now, I am done stomping on myself. When I go back over my words I don’t see anything so gross that I am going to lay down in my pretty pillow-top coffin. I think I will change those colors of gray and black and change them to a drab blue color.

Related articles

• Daily Prompt: ______ is the new ______ (terriwellss.wordpress.com)
• Daily Prompt: ______ is the new ______ (astrokeoflife.wordpress.com)
• Daily Prompt: ______ is the new ______ (dailypost.wordpress.com)

 

Reality At My Door

Not all of us, but plenty of us, including myself, never truly appreciate our very own unique lives that our creator has given to us, until we are almost on death’s row. How can we move through out each day, giving our best, drawing from the naturals of life, and yet not truly understand how precious a gift life is.

As I said above, I am so guilty of this myself, and I wonder at how I can drift through each day, observing the days turning into weeks then month and finally years. What is it in each of us, that we hate, but we constantly place it on the back part of our mind, shoving it so far back, that we can go for long periods of living without thinking twice about the real issue.

For me, smoking and my weight are my personal triggers. I know it is unhealthy, but do I really understand how unhealthy it is. Is some of our ideas brought on from our society, or do we know for a fact, that all that we hear and see is true. Is it not true, that we are all created uniquely? We have different bone formations, different genes, our bodies are not all slim in structure. Can this play a role in whether we are healthy or not, or is it a game from within our brains that we must conform to what society believes.

My weight, has been on my mind for the past month or so. Now let me state, that although, I shove my weight in the back part of my mind, the front part remembers it socially. When I see the new swimsuit line come out, or the cute little winter dresses for the holidays, there is a part of me, that kicks myself, because I have too much weight on me to be able to feel comfortable and to look my best in an outfit like that.

I could have done something about this, but I didn’t. Now in less than a month away, I am meeting a blogging friend for the first time, and I am not so much nervous, I will save that for the day this person arrives, but I am kicking myself for not taking my looks more seriously.

I have allowed my environment to get the best of me. I stay in the house 80% of the time. I have fooled myself with explanations of who cares, who is going to see me, I have no one to impress, but I have realized, for me, these are excuses. Don’t I want my own body to be a place that is the best it can be for Jesus to want to live in? Don’t I want my body to be the best it can be for those unexpected times of meeting that new friend, or how about running accidentally into a gorgeous looking man at the store? Would I really want him to see me with rollers in my hair and wearing those cute sleeper pants, that can pass for public wear, no one realizing that I slept in them last night? Or would I rather take the five minutes to get dressed, wear that bra, put a dash of blush and mascara, and at least run a brush and comb through my hair?

Why does it take a near death episode of a family member, or a close friend, or maybe a co-worker, to snap us into reality. You know what I mean. You or I or someone you know, loses a parent to lung cancer, and all of a sudden, no matter how hard it is, we throw that partial pack of cigarettes away in the trash. We were snapped into reality, quicker than you can say blink! We realize at that precise moment, that we all live on borrowed time. It is not ours to choose our ending date, but Gods.

I am so guilty of not laying down the rotten, addicting smokes. I am the first to say that I am highly addicted. If I accidentally leave them at home, my heart starts racing, I can feel the beat coming through my clothes. I will sometimes race back home to retrieve them, or maybe I will just stop at a gas station and grab a pack. I must have them with me, I may need them.

It sounds so utterly ridiculous, but this is my addiction. The same goes for my weight. I know it is hard on my heart to pump harder. Hearts are only made to work properly for so many years, before it begins to show signs of wear and tear.  I know the statistics are that over weight and smoking can and may cause early deaths, so why do I choose to ignore it.

Why does it take a near death to make me change my ways. Are any of you with me here on this topic? You may be able to replace the words weight and smoking with your own personal struggles. This may be a better way to relate better. Ask yourself why you put off what you do.

What can we do to change this pattern that we have let ourselves slip into. Can God help us to better our vision? Must we wait until we see death at our neighbor’s door? Let any of you join me in prayer, praying for God’s blessings and asking him to help us to realize that we belong to him and him alone. That we want our temple to become the best home it can be for Jesus to live in. Let us come together as a group of people, acknowledging our own faults, and knowing we are humans, and that with the help and guidance from God and each other, we can learn to conquer what we have hidden in the back of our minds. We can not make miracles happen over night, but we can take the back burner where simmer is on, and turn it off, bringing it to the front burner, and force ourselves to bring it into reality of now. With our own faith, and desires, and the help of each other and God, we can at least make a start to even better lives. We can show God in this way how much we truly love and respect him, and we can set examples for our youth so that they do not follow in the same patterns.

I wish I was smarter, because if I was, I would create some type of web page, that all can come to for support. To be able to talk without fear of ridicule, to open our hearts sharing our frustrations, to be able to bond with another human that is suffering in the same way. Together, we could make a change, a difference, a start.

A Writing Exercise From LinkedIn

I have been writing a few writing exercises from LinkedIn, and so decided to share a few here and there. Today’s was short for me, and sometimes they are longer. Here is the one I wrote for today.

 

I am my father’s daughter, because I act just like him, and look so similar, but he had qualities that some would choose not to like along with other wonderful things about him I admired. He was a perfectionist, and so am I. Learning that we can not be perfect in God’s eyes, shows me that I will never attain it either, but I keep trying. I have slowed down some through the years, and with aging, I have also picked up some new ones. One of the things my family I created was, we could not go anywhere for fun or socializing, unless our home was spotless. When I look at that today, I think how stupid is that, right? You can clean and clean and it will be right there again, waiting for you the next day. My dad was very creative,and could make something out of nothing, and he loved using his hands to work with wood. I am the same way. People are always amazed at how cheap I can decorate or make a piece of nothing into something, if I need it. My dad smoked, and through his life, he also smoked stinky cigars, after quad bypass and five years yet to live, he is no longer here. Am I going to be like my father and follow those foot step patterns also? I smoke.