Tale of the Turkey : K Street Magazine

Everyone wants to know how the Thanksgiving bird turned out. I’m a bit confused, a bit embarrassed, but very proud. Here’s the turkey tale:

This was my second Thanksgiving to stay in DC, but my first one to actually try to cook my own turkey. Rodrigo and I went to the Giant and bought the smallest turkey we could find. It was a 5 pounder. (I know… my Dad says that turkey was just a baby!) It was pretty small, as you can imagine, but there were just the two of us eating it, and I’m not even that big of a meat-eater.

I downloaded probably five recipes for Thanksgiving turkey online and tried to reconcile all of them into the one best recipe. When I finally got the packaging open and saw the thing, I wasn’t sure which way was up. Thank goodness they had already taken the stuff out of the inside, but that was about it. I put it in a roasting dish, gaping hole up, and “seasoned” it with butter, salt, pepper, and my favorite, Tony’s (it’s a Creole thing) and put it in the oven for the suggested 1.5 hours.

Time was up and it didn’t look much different. Certainly not deliciously golden brown. I started to think I had put it in upside down… but can you imagine turning over a roasting turkey halfway through cooking?? I did it. And then I put it in the oven for another 1.5 hours. Surely this thing was going to be dry as heck, but dry was better than undercooked, right?!

Finally the thermometer popped out of the turkey and I knew it was “ready” – not a big, beautiful, browned bird, but it was edible and not a dinnertime disaster either. The funniest part was when Rodrigo came over to eat and asked me right away… “Is the turkey upside down?”
Who knows!!

My favorite part is the pecan pie anyway 🙂