How to thaw a turkey

The first place you’ll want to start is with thawing the bird if it is frozen.  Given these turkeys are frozen solid you’ll want to pull out the turkey 2 days in advance of when you want to cook it.  The first day I set it out on the counter in a roasting pan and let it thaw out, without removing the plastic packaging.  At night I then put it in the fridge until morning.  The next morning take it out of the fridge and remove the plastic packaging, as well as the innards from the bird, which with mine had the neck in the rear cavity, then the rest of it in a wax paper package stored in the neck area.  Do not throw these parts out, they are used to help make the gravy.  Put them in a small container in the fridge for later. You’ll want to clean and sanitize a wash tub, or the kitchen sink and allow the turkey to soak until it is thawed.  You’ll want to check periodically that the water is still cold during this process, as you don’t want the turkey to get too warm.  Check the inside and outside to see if it’s still frozen.  If it’s all thawed, then you can commence with the next stage of preparation.

Brining a turkey

If you’re not familiar with brining, it is essentially the process of infusing flavour into a food item, and in our case a turkey.  You’ll want to do this process the night before the turkey is to be cooked, 10 – 12 hours for brining is ideal.

To brine a turkey you will require either a large stock pot, a food grade bucket or a brining bag.  It is important to have the right equipment for this step, as you don’t want the brine to leak, or to contaminate the turkey.  Another option is if you have a large cooler that will work as well, dependent on the size of your turkey.  Also to brine you will need to have a fresh turkey, not a kosher or pre-basted turkey like a Butterball.

I was working with a 20lb turkey, so I was able to fit mine into a large stock pot.  Put the turkey into your container, then measure out the water you are adding.  Add 1/4 cup of salt per litre, or for our American friends, 1 cup per gallon.  All told my stockpot took roughly 13 litres of water to submerge my turkey, so I added a little over 3 cups of salt to the mixture.

turkey in brine

Brine mixture

• 1/2 cup chicken soup stock powder
• 1 cup sugar
• 5 cloves of mashed garlic
• 3 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

This is where you can get a little creative with adding additional ingredients to flavour the brine.  I kept mine relatively simple, but as you can see there are tonnes of brine recipes.  Throw all the ingredients in and stir them around.

Once prepared you need to find a cold place to store it overnight.  In the fridge is ideal, but if you don’t have the room you could try to putting it outside overnight if it’s cool outside.  If it’s below freezing I wouldn’t advise that though, so check the weather.  Otherwise, maybe consider using the cooler I mentioned earlier with some ice added in to keep things cool.  I have a cold room in my house, so I threw a bunch of ice cubes in with the mix, then places it in there for the night.

Prepping the turkey for cooking

Remove the turkey from the brine and discard the water.  In the sink you will want to rinse the turkey off using cold water, then pat dry using paper towels. At this point I stuffed the bird using the instructions from my sourdough bread and rice stuffing.

Get some butter or margarine and put some in its own bowl.  Using paper towel, rub the margarine onto the body of the turkey, inside and out, getting the legs and wings as well.

turkey ready for the oven

Turkey seasoning rub recipe

• 1 tbsp ground mustard
• 1 tbsp paprika
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
• 8 strips of bacon

Combine all the ingredients except the bacon, then rub all over the bird.  Place the turkey breast side up in your roasting pan  Once the rub is applied you can add the piece de resistance, some bacon.  Lay the strips across the top of the bird to cover the skin. Wrap the wings in tinfoil as they are prone to burning during the cooking process.  You will also want to put tinfoil over top of the turkey while cooking, or just use the roaster lid should you have one at your disposal.  The bird is now ready for the oven.

Cooking the turkey

Heat the oven to 325ºF and cook for 20 minutes per pound of turkey.  Since mine was 20 pounds x 20 minutes = 400 minutes.  400 divided by 60 minutes = roughly 6.5 hours cooking time.  I would check the turkey about every 40 minutes and baste the turkey using a handy turkey baster. I also sprinkled some fresh ground pepper and salt on the turkey a couple times as the basting rubbed of some of the seasoning.  For the last half hour, remove the covering tinfoil to allow the turkey skin to brown up a bit.

The final product

While it was a lot of work, this produced possibly the best turkey I’ve ever had.  It has so much juice and flavour that you could easily enjoy the taste without gravy, though with the awesome gravy this bad boy produced, why would you want to do that?:)

If you like to know how I made the gravy, read my post on how to make great gravy for tips.