We've already made ours, because we're going to a friend's house for Thanksgiving Dinner. But we've made it a tradition to get our own fresh bird and cook it the day after.
This year, we arranged to buy our bird from a local (Cleveland Ohio)
farmer, and her pick-up day was Saturday. We decided, since we'd have the bird that early, might as well roast it up on Sunday.
In prior years, we've brined, added aromatics to the cavity, rubbed some seasonings into the skin, and roasted in the oven per Alton Brown's Romancing the Bird. This year, with Harold McGee (the dean of food science)
coming out against brining, and with our bird being so fresh it was practically still gobbling, we decided to skip the brine.
Our birdie was a whopping 32 pounds.
This bird was sooo large (how large was it?) - it was so large, we had to cut it in half to make it fit in our double ovens.
Each half got a rub of paprika, kosher salt, tellicherry pepper, garlic granules and onion powder, then a lube with rendered turkey fat. Even in half - we only had 1 vessel in the house big enough to hold a half - Mom's Magnalite Turkey Roaster - so Half #1 went there (we haven't used the roaster much, because high pans aren't great for crisp skin - but they do create very moist meat by holding in steam):
After scratching our heads a bit - we realized that Half #2 would just barely fit on the broiler pan that "came" with the oven - we used foil to enclose it for the first two hours of cooking.
The final products were simply amazing!
Happy Thanksgiving, SoWallers! Looking forward to seeing you soon!
