Description
Roast Turkey Recipe that is easy to follow, giving you the perfect but simple delicious meat which will make your family and friends happy.
Roast turkey is a traditional dinner at thanksgiving and Christmas, which can be stuffed or not. Please carry on reading my notes for stuffing turkey.
For many years I have cooked this roast turkey recipe with little choice of a change. The moment I suggest changing the Christmas meat to something else like beef, I am shot down in flames. So it will always be turkey as otherwise according to my boys, “I am spoiling Christmas….”
If you are totally new to cooking a turkey then there are a few simple tips before you just shove it into the oven and hope for the best. Many recipes have now become over fancy and try to do something “new” with what is already a great traditional recipe. I don’t like fancy fuss when it comes to this roast turkey recipe. What I am for, is a whole bird, which is oven cooked fresh, with just succulent meat. The last thing you want is a dry old bird!
So, I keep it simple, but there are some real good tips such as the type of turkey you should buy. This really makes a massive difference! Also the health and hygiene part should never be ignored, especially if you are a novice and have never cooked a turkey before. See below notes to help you.
Ingredients
- Turkey - free-range and/or organic is best
- Butter
- Pepper
- Plenty of tin foil.
- Half an onion peeled and halved, plus some sage leaves and sprigs of thyme.
- Occasionally I place a whole garlic bulb cut in half, and a lemon which has been cut in half into the bottom of the turkey tray. This is more for the gravy. I don't always do this, it is as and when I feel like it.
Instructions
- Cooking times for the Roast Turkey Recipe are as follows:-
- Less than 4Kg – 45 mins per kg plus 20 mins
- 4Kg – 6.5kg – 40 mins per kg plus 20 mins
- More than 6.5kg – 35 mins per kg plus 20 mins
The temperature for the oven should be 180 degrees centigrade.
I rub my turkey in lots of butter and season with salt and pepper. I even get the butter underneath the surface of the skin to keep the meat moist. This can be quite tricky as you have to do it without splitting the skin. Just gently pull the skin up and gently slide your hand underneath. Again, do this very gently and make sure you do not have jewellery, or sharp nails to pierce the skin. Then rub some butter under the skin layer you have created.
The turkey then needs to be placed in a good sized tin with a double layer of foil which is quite loose. The most important part is to ensure that the foil is well sealed under the top rim of the tin. Every half an hour or so, I will undo the tin foil and baste the turkey in the juices.
A turkey basting tool is an essential piece of kit and sometimes hard to find around Christmas. I use mine throughout the year for other meats. I have placed an affiliate link below for the turkey baster should you need one. They are a cheap bit of kit, but trying to find one in a store over Christmas is jolly hard! There is an affiliate link below this recipe card for one.
Make sure you clean the turkey baster well afterwards. I fill a bowl of hot soapy water and as well as cleaning the outside, you use the end to suck up and squirt the water out a few times. Its actually quite fun and satisfying. My boys when they were growing up had lots of fun at the kitchen sink with it. Funny how as they are now older that is no longer the case!
It’s really important to remove the foil for the last 30 minutes of cooking so that the skin goes lovely and golden.
To check that the turkey is cooked, insert a skewer into the thickest part of the leg and check that the juices run clear. If there is the slightest pink in the juice, put it back into the oven and keep checking ten minutes at a time, until cooked.
Don’t waste the turkey juices in the tray that it has been cooking in. A recipe for turkey gravy is here, again it has minimal faff and extravagance. If you have a good flavour turkey, you don’t need a thousand other ingredients.
You should rest the turkey for at least 40 minutes before carving and serving. This allows the fibres of the turkey to relax and the juices to go back into the meat. Simply keep the turkey in a warm place with foil over it before carving.
Don’t waste the leftovers… you will find some recipes to help you use leftover turkey coming up soon!
Notes
Buy a good quality turkey. I buy a bronze turkey. A bronze turkey is where it is an older established breed, which has slower growth with therefore a better flavour meat. Often these type of free range or organic turkeys have had better living standards, and for me that is also of great importance.
The tin foil I use is a proper turkey foil. You may think this is ridiculous, but the turkey and tin tends to be large and needs removing and placing back on several times whilst cooking. Proper turkey foil is stronger and a lot bigger in dimension, so makes the job a lot easier.
Make sure that before you start to cook the turkey, that if it has been frozen, it is defrosted properly and is at room temperature. Read the defrosting information on any packaging that you have bought. It can often take a whole day to defrost depending on the size of your turkey. Nobody wants food poisoning. So make sure that it is in date if using a fresh one, or properly defrosted if it has been frozen.
Check to see if you have a bag of giblets inside. Cooked plastic does not taste pleasant! Also check under the turkey for any packaging too.
Please wash your hands after touching raw turkey to stop cross contamination with other foods and surfaces in your kitchen. We want fun, not food poisoning at Christmas. Make sure any knife, board etc is also kept separate from everything else. I do NOT wash my turkey, and that is because washing poultry can cross contaminate.
Personally I do not like to stuff my turkey with stuffing mix. If this is the first time you have ever cooked turkey, then I would refrain from putting the stuffing inside, as usually when you stuff a turkey it takes longer to cook. For about 500g of stuffing that is put inside a turkey, you will need about an extra 20 minutes cooking time. Instead of putting stuffing inside the turkey I will peel and cut an onion in half and put that inside the cavity along with some sprigs of thyme and sage.
The yield, cook and nutrition details below is based on a 4kg turkey.
- Prep Time: 10 Minutes
- Cook Time: 3 hours 20 minutes
- Category: Dinner
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: British
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1/8
- Calories: 795
- Sugar: 0g
- Sodium: 504.7mg
- Fat: 19.2g
- Saturated Fat: 5.7g
- Unsaturated Fat: 5.2g
- Trans Fat: 0.2g
- Carbohydrates: 0g
- Fiber: 0g
- Protein: 145.2g
- Cholesterol: 504.7mg