Turkey?? - Tucson,AZ

The secret to the juicy turkey is to brine it! We started doing this a few years ago and have had amazing results. You then put some oil on it, salt and pepper and put it in the oven for 20 min/pound. I don't know about southern sides, we usually do the mash potatoes, gravy, biscuits, carrots and call it good. My sister tried some mashed sweet potatoes last year that were nasty, but I found an amazing recipe for them this year. Unfortunately, it would only be the two of us that would eat them.

My turkey's always come out extremely juicy. (I do not stuff the turkey)
What I do is put it in a pan and cake country crock on the top of the breast of the turkey. Then every half hour baste the turkey with the juices in the pan. You also need to turn the turkey 90* so that the turkey gets G. instead of brown on one side. I continue to do this for the entire cook time that is required on the packaging.

I even make mashed potatoes and instead of using butter and milk.... I use cream cheese and put chive onions on top.

I especially love making candied yams.
Hope you have a great Thanksgiving!

I usually drizzle it with olive oil and sprinkle with salt, pepper, Ms. Dash, italian seasoning, and sage. I cover it with foil and cook it per the instructions. After a couple of hours (once you can smell it) you can start basting the turkey with the juices. I don't take the foil off to brown the turkey until like the last 1/2 hour of cooking.

You can buy gravy or you can use the juices from the turkey. I will get all the juices in a pan at the end of cooking and heat it up on low-med heat. In a cup I add water and flour and mix together, make sure it's really runny. I then add it to the juices, mixing while pouring it in. This helps with preventing lumps. I don't have exact measurements but I would guess an 1/8 cup flour to 8 oz water. If its too thick add more water, if too runny, mix more water and flour together and add that to the pan to help thicken it. Add salt and pepper to taste. All the seasonings in the juices make great tasting gravy.

I cook ths stuffing separate from the turkey and use pepperidge farms stuffing mix. I add some Ms. Dash to it and I use chicken broth instead of water. I sautee diced celery and onion to add to it. You can add raisins if you like them. We've added dried cranberries in the past and it gives it great flavor.

One thing we do is baked beans. I take a large can of Bush's baked beans (you can use any kind), barbeque sauce, brown sugar, onion and bacon. In a pan cook about 1/2 diced onion and 1/2 a package of bacon also cut up small. Once both are cooked drain the can of beans and add to the pan. I dump a bunch of my favorite BBQ sauce, probably 1/2 to 1 cup and about a 1/2 cup of brown sugar, mix all together and heat up on med-med high and then simmer for as long as you want. The longer it simmers the better it is.

If anyone likes yams or sweet potatoes you can do it the easy way and buy a can of sweet potatoes, drain them and put in a baking dish, add slices of butter here and there and sprinkle with brown sugar, cover and bake at 300 for about 30-40 minutes, once cooked, take cover off and add marshmallows, cook until marshmallows are golden.

I hope this helps. Happy Thanksgiving. =)

Hi A., welcome to AZ! This is my first year doing tgiving, my mom is having surgery the day before. I googled "easy thankgiving recipes" and tons of them came up. I decided to do all of my sides in the crockpot (I have 5 of them!). I hope you enjoy your holiday and good luck!

Are you sure you really want to cook your Thanksgiving meal? That is a giant undertaking and so much work for just the 5 of you. Why not go out to a nice restaurant or hotel and have a nice Thanksgiving buffet. You will spend just as much money buying the turkey and everything else. Just a thought. Don't do that to yourself!

Last year I cooked my turkey according to the package & it wasn't ready in time for when we ate. I was so embarrassed as my husbands whole family was over & hungry!!! :(

But I recently read an article in Guideposts about Trisha Yearwood & how her mom makes her turkey & it always turns out perfect. She heats the oven to 500 degrees, prepped the turkey with seasonings and bakes it for an hour. After the hour, she turns the oven off & leaves the turkey in there until the oven cools, maybe another 5 or 6 hours. But it says DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DOOR UNTIL IT COOLS. I'm going to try it and hope it turns out good & on-time.

Happy Thanksgiving & welcome to AZ

Turkey bag! You can buy them in the grocery store. So easy and keeps the turkey moist. You don't need to baste or anything. And if you did want to make gravy from scratch, there's plenty of liquid saved in the bag to make it easy.

Welcome to Az! I have always just put some olive oil and salt and pepper on the outside and put it in one of those reynolds bags and it always turned out good.

My husband always smokes the turkey, so I can't help with that. There is a great cooking light (dosen't taste light) recipe for sweet potato casserole with praline topping. You can look it up on www.cooking light.com It says to cook the sweet potatoes and then mash them, which you can do, or use canned and rinse them to save time. Very yummy!! For cranberry sauce we put a bag of rinsed cranberries in a blender with an orange or two and some sugar. Taste to see if you want more oranges or sugar. We put it in the freezer and the kids like to eat it half frozen.

create a brine and soak the turkey overnight

My recipe for a juicy turkey is injection! If you've ever wondered why a fried turkey never comes out dry it's because it's been injected with a marinade.

I have the Tony Chachere's Creole Butter marinade and injector from Walmart. It's only $3. (You can inject chicken broth instead, if you'd like.) I inject the white meat areas first and I use as much as I want. Never heard anyone complain about a bird being "too juicy"!

Before you throw away the turkey wrapper, be sure to look for the instructions that tell you how long to cook it. Most come with a little pop up thingy when it's done but you still need to know the cooking temperature for size bird. Then place it in the oven covered with foil to seal in those juices or one of those turkey baking bags. Once your turkey is pretty much done, remove the foil or open that plastic bag so that it can brown a bit and have a nice "golden" look when you place it on your table.

Good luck!

My secret is Reynold's Turkey bags. I pat the turkey dry, rub it with butter and sprinkle salt and pepper on it. Then I place it in the the bag (flour the inside of the bag first) and bake according to the instructions. My turkeys have always been moist and juicy and beautiful in color.

I know this is way late and I hope your Thanksgiving dinner turned out great, but I just had to send you the perfect way to cook a turkey with no basting, no bag. Just cut up an orange and an onion and toss the pieces with salt, pepper and some thyme. Add in a bay leaf and stuff it in the inside of washed and patted dry turkey. Bast the outside with some melted butter, (not too much) so it will brown nicely, then cook it for as long as it calls for. Seriously the most moist turkey meat!! And not fattening and not time consuming.

I've made turkey this way over two dozen times and it comes out wonderful every time. I got it out of Barbara Kafka's Roasting book. So, it may sound like it won't work, but it will.

Buy a turkey breast (around 8-9 pounds) and defrost it for a few days in your fridge. Then wash it and put the breast in a pan. Also put in a few sweet potatoes on the racks in your oven (fork prick them). Now bake at 500 degrees for one hour.

That's it. You'll love it.

A turkey bag is my vote!

When I cooked my first turkey, we had a large group coming over for thanksgiving dinner. I put it on a cookie sheet, put salt & pepper on it, and put it in the oven. An hour later I opened the oven to check on it and the flames started shooting out of the oven! That bird was smoked (but not on purpose)!!! So definitely cook the turkey in a LARGE roasting pan or even a foil one to catch all the extra grease or juices, as there will be more than you expect!

After 15 years of cooking turkeys, the years I've used a turkey bag have come out the best. Just follow the instructions included with the bags, and you will have the juiciest turkey in half the time. Enjoy!