It’s been a while since I’ve made turkey on Thanksgiving. Last year we made duck, then for several years before that we went to friends’ houses for the holiday. This year we hosted two other couples and made the turkey.
I’m not wedded to the Norman Rockwell idea of an intact turkey, perfectly browned, coming to the table. Anthony Bourdain, in his cookbook Appetites, advocated having separate stunt and business turkeys. The stunt turkey was for show, the business turkey got served. This seems a major waste of money and precious oven space; therefore, I went with spatchcocking.
You can find directions for roasting a spatchcocked turkey (or chicken) in numerous cookbooks. My initial instructions were from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Food Lab. Julian also found a You Tube video (see this page). I went to work the night before Thanksgiving with a 10-pound turkey and a pair of kitchen shears. Note to self: I need sharper shears. I lived in fear of slashing myself. Luckily, I managed to remove the backbone without bleeding to death. The avian victim was put in the refrigerator overnight. The next day I smeared herb butter under and atop the skin. I chopped up some carrots, onion, and celery and put them in the bottom of the roasting pan. The turkey was spread-eagled on a rack above the vegetables and placed in a 450° oven. Miraculously, the bird was done in less than 90 minutes. Even more miraculously, the turkey was tender. (The preponderance of butter didn’t hurt.)
I didn’t think to take a photo of the final product. As a consolation prize, here’s a picture of the everything rolls I made Thanksgiving morning. (You can find the recipe here.)
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