In this recipe, there will be A LOT of fresh and natural ingredients involved as I show you how to cook a turkey without constantly checking the oven. Experience the real goodness of a moist and flavorful turkey perfect for Thanksgiving and big family gatherings!
I like to prepare what I call the ‘magical dressing’ first for the turkey. Why do I call it magical? Because with this kind of dressing, there will be no need to keep checking on the oven if you’re overcooking the turkey or not. I guarantee you that it’ll come out not dry, but perfectly moist.
Pick which herbs you want to use. As for me, I have my favorites right here – cilantro, green onion, and parsley. Parsley is a good source of Vitamin C which is really good during allergy season.
Add 1-3 tablespoons of garlic paste. In another video of mine on my YouTube channel, I taught how to make this amazing garlic paste, but you can of course use your own preferred garlic paste.
Add 2 teaspoons of salt.
Add a tablespoon of peppercorn. You can do a whole strip of peppercorn or a 1.5 teaspoons of dry pepper, depending on how big the turkey is. This recipe is good for a 14.5 pounds of turkey which will feed about 15 people.
Mix them all up and put in a food processor.
Add Greek yogurt into the mix. Once herb mixture is done processing, mix it into some Greek yogurt. The smell is going to be amazing. Just add the yogurt into the green and delicious herb mix. You could prepare this with any of your favorite herbs. If you like some spices, you can add those. I sometimes like to add oriental spices into the mix to get a bit of a palate surprise.
Break the wings.
You will place the wings at the bottom of the pan. Wings become very tender while baking and they tend to fall off the body.
Detach the skin from the turkey and stuff the mix under the skin thinly to season it. You can just use your hands to season the turkey with the mix you just made. If by chance the skin rips out, put a toothpick to hold the skin in place while it’s baking. By the time it’s baked, just pull out the toothpicks.The leftover mix can be used for the sauce.
Refrigerate overnight. The turkey is now ready to refrigerate overnight. Tie some twine around the legs if you find they’re too open and won’t look nice when served. Tight-wrap the turkey with plastic. This will prevent the seasoning to unstick from the skin, and the dressing will remain fine.
Add some salt on top. After refrigerating overnight, add some salt on top of the turkey right before baking it. At this point, the turkey is now well-seasoned and the herb flavors have seeped in.
Pour some wine onto the oven pan.
Put the turkey in a convection oven in 250 degrees for four hours.
Cover with foil for 20 minutes. For this 14.5 pounder turkey, you can cover it with foil for about 20 minutes. For bigger ones like a 20 or 25 pounder, leave it at least 30-40 minutes with foil. This is so all the juices from the baking will set in and you’ll have an even juicier turkey to serve.
For this, I made a delicious mushroom filling. It’s a great idea to make your filling separately first because you start baking. Cooking both the turkey and the filling at the same time saves you baking time. The turkey will be well-seasonedanyway because of the herb dressing you just made. The filling now is just to give the turkey more flavors. Now you have a turkey that’s well-seasoned from skin to meat, moist and juicy, and very flavorful with natural and fresh ingredients you carefully chose – THAT is how to cook a turkey.
Chef Coach, Food Nutritionist and Cook in Love with Latin Food, Author of six cookbooks. 40+ years of Experience in the Food Industry & Nutrition
...& the Science of Food
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