To dread cooking the blasted turkey every year?

Yabu. Just stop doing it

All meats for Christmas Day come from Marks or Waitrose or coop, in their own cooking tin and with instructions/timings for cooking. In 30plus years, no one has died, got the projectile vomits or the s*s!

it may be more expensive, but it’s tasty and nice.

HRTFT
OP do you have a large slow cooker? I have done our turkey crown in the slow cooker the last two years and it was very succulent. I will be doing it that way again this year.

I stab it with a knife and insert rolled up rosemary and bacon (you can put garlic as well if you like) into the cuts. Then cover it with bacon on top.

Never comes dry.

I cooked a (defrosted) frozen turkey last weekend. It tasted fine and wasn’t dry at all.

Defrosted in garage for a couple of days (it was cold enough).
Removed the giblets.
Bit of butter shoved up under the skin
Streaky bacon applied.
Few herbs shoved up its arse.
20mls of water in roasting pan.
Tightly sealed it in with foil.
Temp and time as per the BBC good food meat cooking app.
Take out of oven when time up, leave the foil on, cover with a towel. Leave to rest for 30mins - hour.

No basting.
No brining.
Didn’t stuff it.
Used juices for gravy.

Cook it upside down. You won’t have crispy skin but at least the breast meat won’t be all dried out!

Me too, St Delia all the way!

We love turkey.

Get the oven really hot before you put the turkey in, give it a blast of very hot for about 30 mins to get the heat all the way through, then turn the oven down.

Prep wise, butter under the skin if you can. A potato inside so that gives off moisture from the inside. Cover with streaky bacon. And sit it on some veg, and cover veg with veg stock. Cover loosely with tin foil, so the steam from the veg stock will help to keep it moist.

And I cook mine Xmas eve.

Bacofoil turkey roasting bags. No other fannying on required. Thank me later...

If it’s not too big to manhandle (personhandle?) what I’ve done more than once is roast it breast side down, and turn it over just for the last 15 minutes or so. Plus ours is always rested for around an hour. That also gives plenty of time for pigs in blankets and everything else to cook, and to make proper gravy in the roasting tin - before shoving it in the dishwasher.

I've ditched the turkey this year, it's horrible, too expensive and we just did it because that's what you are supposed to have.

Mum was horrified I'm doing beef and chicken this year but I feel utterly liberated 🤣

I do it upside down and it doesn't look the best but the meat is very moist.

I use Nigella’s non-brining method. Mostly cooked upside down and finished off right way up.
Never dry. Swapped from fresh to frozen a few years back and no one noticed the difference.

We used to buy Kelly Bronze turkeys, and the main thing I learned is that they need far less oven time than you might think! No wonder the turkey of my childhood was so dry: the damn thing had been cooked for 5 hours more than necessary! I used to buy a really small one and they’d take 2 hours or so… DM was convinced I would poison us all!

I have Nigella’d the turkey for the last few years, and must admit that the frozen one I bought last year tasted just as good (although I don’t pretend to be a turkey expert).

Go online and check how long to cook it, depending on weight. Get a meat thermometer, and consider the Nigella bucket of brine!

Brine it overnight 23-24 December.
Cook it on low overnight in a range (my dad put it in a gas oven on 2 or 3 at 11pm just before leaving for midnight mass, basted on return from mass, then at breakfast, then every hour, then taken out at 1pm).
Cook it upside down in a foil tent to circulate hot air and so the juices run into the breast.
Cook it right way up for the last 15-30 minutes.
Rest it in tea towel wrap for at least an hour.
Seriously get a beef joint for 2025 and tell the family this year.
Do not be persuaded to revert to turkey.
If they insist, they can cook all of the food next year.
Alternatively, go away for Christmas 2025.

Get a turkey crown

Simple answer is to not have a turkey. We have not had one for years and usually get a couple of joints of beef and lamb or pork, and sometimes a good chicken. But mostly we have more of a gamey meal which is different to the usual Sunday roasts we have most weeks

Not RTFT but our turkey is always moist.

My dad's secret was to put some water in the roasting tray. So I get the turkey, put flora (am intolerant to butter) on the skin and lots of herbs. Stick some stuffing in the cavity and put a couple of garlic cloves where the wings join the body. Put around 5mm of water in the tray then seal it up carefully with foil. It means that the turkey starts to steam once the oven gets to temperature. After 90 minutes or so, I take it out, unwrap it and baste it. Normally someone helps by tipping the tray then I pour the juices over the breast & legs. Then seal it back up and give it another hour. I repeat this every hour until the end of the cooking time. Then take it out of the oven, pour off most of the juices for gravy then leave it wrapped up really well with towels over the foil to rest.

I CBA with the roasting it upside down malarkey. We don't eat bacon, so never use that to wrap it in. DH carves it straight from the roasting tray. So far, so good, and I've cooked Christmas lunch almost every year for the last 25 years.

Fresh turkey roasted upside down in a turkey bag. Turned right way up and out of bag for last 20 minutes.

The juices drain down into the breast as it cooks rather than out of the meat so it is moist rather than dry.

Turkey tastes horrible and they have an awful cruel life.

Buy an organic something-or-other next year. Anything but turkey.

I forgot to say the lemon/oranges / onion into the cavity.

I have cooked mine upside down, it does keep it more moist, but isn’t very pretty to serve !

I find resting is the answer

Don’t do one?

We do chicken and beef. None of us are fussed about turkey. No matter what you do it always ends up dry

Try Nigella's turkey recipe where you brine the turkey for a day beforehand. Always works well for us and it massively reduces the cooking time (if you don't have all the spices to hand then I wouldn't worry, the main ingredients that you need are salt, sugar and citrus juice).

If using a frozen turkey I'd defrost and remove giblets before brining.

Re the ham - Nigella's coca cola ham is always lovely too.

I haven’t gone through all the replies so this might already be covered.

if you really can’t face butter under the skin, then but on the skin, it’s not so good but ok, I did this for years before learning to go under the skin.

stuffing, don’t stuff the cavity do the other end where the wish bone is, lift the fold of skin, and stuff a big ball of stuffing there then cover with skin tucking under neath. You can always cook the stuffing separately, I lay bacon on tinfoil or cling film, but a sausage shaped stuffing on then fold bacon round - think sausage roll, roll tight with film/ foil pop in fridge to set over night then roast. It’s lovely.

once you have stuffed the Turkey if doing. Butter well then cover with bacon, cover with tinfoil loosely and seal round edge of tin to make a tent of tinfoil.

it’s worth buying a baster, just inject the juices into the breast 2 or 3 times during cooking.

last half hour remove tinfoil to crisp bacon.

when cooked, lift out oven, wrap tight in foil, then cover with as many tea towels you can spare. This will keep the Turkey hot for a good hour or so while you cook everything else. This resting time is important you really need to let it sit for a good hour gently steaming in its bed.

It's too late this year but I wouldn't say anything next year. Just let them assume it's all going along as usual and buy the meat you'd actually like to cook (or a big chicken, that's a genius move upthread) and do the trimmings you'd actually like- not sprouts because you have to and so on.

Would anyone else at home actually notice the prep / items in fridge etc before it hits the table done? They can buy and make it themselves then. Or accept that not noticing until the joint/chicken/whatever is in the oven means they don't care as much as they think they do.

We're at my mothers this year. She'll do a roast (chicken or beef, none of us like turkey and we're only 4 people anyway) because that's what she wants to cook and finds easy but I never make a roast for Christmas. I'm lazy. I usually make a goulashy thing and chocolate mousse if it's my turn as both recipes can be made ahead (Christmas Eve when DH is either at work or off family visiting) and pulled out of the fridge ready or in need of nothing more than the hob being turned on and a drop of water to get going. 15/20 mins tops. I won't give my day over to all the prep and oven-bothering. Or the faff of making decent gravy (always Compsons gravy salts, never Bisto). I don't mind a little time spent the day before to make Christmas Day less work.

Good luck with your turkey! Hopefully it's the last one!