To dread cooking the blasted turkey every year?

I know them and I'm one of them!

I hope you enjoy it hugely. But my advice to the OP stands - if she's not enjoying the whole turkey rigmarole, just bin it, forever.

I think you simply don't know enough people who know about and really enjoy good food.

But that's fine. I and my family will continue to enjoy our flavoursome roast turkey on Christmas day.

No, it's certainly nothing like chicken - chicken has an identifiable flavour! Amazing anyone would pick turkey over a nice tasty chicken.

I'd love to see if anyone who claims to like white fish could tell the difference between haddock / cod / plaice etc if they didn't know...

I think it's quite likely that ten people you know have cooked it wrongly or bought the wrong bird. Most turkeys on sale are cheap meat, in the same way that most chickens for sale are cheap meat. When I go to the supermarket there are shelves and shelves of cheap chicken, but only one or two with the free range birds or pieces I buy, it's the same with turkey. Plus many people buy a frozen bird. Vast numbers of people don't care about the quality of meat or poultry, they're simply driven by cost.

A high quality bird cooked well isn't tasteless at all, turkey has a special flavour of its own, it's not bland and it's not like chicken.

You've also been eating poorly cooked white fish if you think that tastes of nothing.

Maybe you've got a problem with your taste buds if you think these foods which do have a taste are tasteless.

I buy Turkey breast joints that helpfully come in foil trays just to fling at the oven, cooks in a fraction of the tie, solid meat, and doesn't dry out. Also saves oven space!

I've never once bought or cooked one (as I don't like the stuff, plus even if I did I could never afford it), but I've had to endure them cooked by maybe ten other people, and they were all the same - surely they can't all be doing it wrong? Turkey is like white fish - just tastes of nothing at all. You can make it just about ok if you get roast potato / veg / stuffing / gravy / a bit of a pig in blanket in the same mouthful, but otherwise it might as well be a chunk of tofu - just a sort of hunk of Protein. Dense white...Stuff. Always feels to me like it could have been created in a lab for space missions or something.

If significant numbers of people actually liked it, the food industry would be making it available in much smaller pieces to make it affordable, a lot more than they do - we'd all be having turkey burgers / sausages / pies all year round, seeing the legs individually packaged etc - and we'd see it on restaurant menus a lot more (do you ever see it, when it's not Xmas or a carvery?). Your preferred variety WOULD be available year-round, if the demand existed. I mean, it'd be more expensive than chicken, but so is steak, and people keep buying that because they love it. Very few people love turkey - it's only tradition and emotion that keeps anyone who breeds the things in business.

He's already got one. Loads in fact.

Take the turkey out of the fridge 2 hours before it goes into the oven.
I always put a lot of butter under the skin.
Pop an orange, a lemon and a few garlic cloves into the cavity.
Put it in a baking tray with about two inches of water.
Completely seal with tinfoil, the foil must be airtight.
Put into a preheated oven.
Cook for three quarters of the suggested cooking time. Do not baste.
For the last quarter of cooking time remove the foil and baste.
When it is cooked remove from the oven and re wrap with tinfoil foil. Then wrap in a towel (trust the process 😀)
Leave for around an hour before carving
I've used this method for years and have never had a dry turkey.

Rubbish.
All my family love turkey and its never been dry or tasteless.

The reason I don't eat it all year round is 1)that it's too big to eat regularly for a small family or single person as I am now, 2) I only ever buy free range fresh bronze and they aren't available all year round and 3) at 80 quid for a smallish bird I couldn't justify the expense.

If your turkey is dry and tasteless you're buying the wrong bird and cooking it wrongly.

All turkeys are dry and tasteless, no matter what you or anyone else does. Nobody really loves turkey - if they did we'd all be eating it all year round. Ditch the pointless things forever and get a duck, or two if there's a lot of you. Can't go wrong with duck - well done and crispy or pink, it's delicious.

phil vickery’s method. We do put butter under the skin too mind you. We have a frozen turkey every year and it has (please don’t jinx) always been juicy and tasty. Good luck!

Don’t do it then, I never have. If people want a big dry or wrapped in a tonne of butter turkey that desperately they can get it themselves and cook it.

Get a turkey crown

DH does ours and he has a rack in the roasting dish, puts the turkey on there. Then he fills the roasting dish with water so as that water exporates the steam goes up through the turkey, keeping it moist. Obviously the foil then traps a lot of that moisture in too. He just uses some butter to baste it, tops up the water as the cold water going in creates more steam. Boom…turkey isn’t dry.

To be fair though it’s just a roast dinner with a few added sides - we gave up turkey up in 2013 and have never had one since, none were bad I just don’t like the taste much . Lived in Oxford at the time and the splendid butchers in indoor market had some really good looking organic cockerels on display around 4 days before Xmas - around 4kg, I ordered one to pick up 2 days later and the butcher said, you won’t regret it and I never have - prefer it on sandwiches, it’s like the most succulent meaty chicken , fantastic hot or cold, in pies, doesn’t dry out - done the same every year since. My FIL pulled a face first year and said ‘what , no turkey’ - even he thought after the first year that it was better option - not cheap though, I pay about £48

Can't cook. Besides, the microwave's broken.

Why didn't you cook it instead? Give her a break from being a PROFESSIONAL CHEF AND THERFORE PROBABLY FINDS COOKING STUFF QUITE EASY ANYWAY

Well don't torture yourself. Buy beef or lamb, we had salmon en croute one year. It was lovely. As pp has said I have never cooked a turkey ever and have no intention of ever cooking one.

How is that helpful though? How does that help the average person who feels pressure on the day? It sounds like you are just boasting about your wife’s ability. Which, given she is a professional chef, doesn’t really help the average person with only one oven, cooking a meal that’s completely different to what they usually cook at any other time.

Honestly, the amount of hype surrounding Christmas dinner. My wife is/was a professional cook with a modest restaurant, and to her, preparation of Christmas dinner is easier than falling off a log, certainly much easier than the constant pressures of running even a small restaurant.

Frozen is very often actually better than so called 'fresh' according to many recent reports.

We had a turkey today for various reasons and it was one of the best I've had, flavourful, succulent, delicious, nothing dry about it, everyone loved it.
No idea if it was the turkey itself or the way I cooked it which was different to usual. Bird was a Chesham Bronze from Aldi, and I cooked it the Jamie Oliver easy way, it really was easy, veg trivet with giblets in the tray and butter all over it, no faffing round with putting it under the skin. Taking his advice I cooked it for 27 mins per kg as free range good quality birds cook in less time.
Then made delicious gravy using the veg and giblets left in the tray.
Would definitely do that way again.

We only have a crown these days anyway (there are only 3 of us) so generally, I tend to slice some of it but it still gets presented on the platter. Not as impressive as a turkey but it's just how it is. I think the years I cooked it the day before, we had more people over and it was easier to be sociable rather than spend the morning in the kitchen.

Everything is still put in naice serving dishes (courtesy of our wedding guests decades ago we have a tres tres posh dinner service). and everyone then gets whatever they like...

Including (shock horror!) yorkshire puddings ;) which I know is incredibly divisive.

You're right though, it is interesting to see how other people do things and what everyone's traditions are :)

My parents collect turkey crown on CE. Then keep it in cool box in garage with ice packs. Rotate them every 4 hours.

Never had a problem

So you don’t carve the turkey at the table? Part of the joy and occasion of Christmas dinner for me is seeing everything set out on platters and serving dishes, with the turkey and ham being carved at the table and everyone helping themselves. I can see the benefits of then portioning up and freezing the remainder of the meats and gravy.

Everyone is different though and what I think of as festive is not necessarily anyone else’s idea of festive! The important thing is what works for you and your family - I find it really interesting hearing about the way other people do things, especially Christmas which is so laden with tradition….yet everyone’s traditions are different. Vive la difference!