Roasting Your Turkey
Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Remove one rack and place the remaining rack near the bottom.
An hour before roasting, remove your turkey from your brine and rinse with cold water. Pat turkey dry with paper towels or make it do a funky dance to drip dry! Sorry, turkey gets me really excited and I can’t help but make my turkey have character.
Add your aromatics to the cavity. Place the turkey in a large roasting pan. Your pasture raised, brined turkey will be
juicy. You will need lots of room for the turkey to drip without flooding your oven.
In the roasting pan, place 3 or 4 quartered onions, shallots, carrots, roasting potatoes, and any other root vegetables you prefer. Think gravy. These will be tasty side veggies as well as add flavor to your gravy. For really large birds, you may want to add the potatoes and carrots half way through, coated in olive oil, to keep from over-cooking.
Place the bird on a rack in the roasting pan, breast side up. Slice the skin along the breastbone and pour melted butter under the skin. Rub melted butter, olive oil, or canola oil all over the bird. Pin the skin back together or cover with
cheesecloth, moistened in melted butter. I’ve seen some cooks cover the entire bird in butter-doused cheesecloth
and have excellent results.
Place your cool but not completely refrigerated turkey in the oven at 450 degrees for approximately 30 minutes. You want
to watch it carefully. This is simply to allow the skin to crisp up and lock in the moisture. Once the skin has browned moderately, reduce oven heat to 325 or 350 degrees and roast slowly. For big birds, I recommend the 325. If the skin continues to cook too much, apply a layer of aluminum foil tented over the bird to keep it from burning.
Roast your turkey for approximately 12 minutes per lb. After 2 or 2.5 hours at the lower temperature, check bird frequently. You want an internal temperature in the breast meat or thigh meat of 160 degrees. The turkey will continue to cook when removed from the oven…so don’t keep cooking “just to be safe.” You can always put it back in!
