Turkey: pride before a fall

[ILookedintheWater]

I have never found turkey dry.
Over the years I've cooked it with bacon, with butter, with cream cheese, all sorts of ways and all sorts of recipes. I have read that others find it dry and not really understood. I guess I just thought they didn't cook it properly...until this year.
Absolute disaster. I read the recommended cooking time and thought it was a bit long, so checked it early and it was already completely cooked (and looked a bit over). I wrapped it up to rest and got on with everything else.

It carved really badly. Tasted stringy and was dry on the tongue. There were enough other meats on the table and enough different gravies and sauces that it didn't ruin the whole meal but I was gutted.

So, herewith my apology for automatically thinking that a dry turkey was the cooks fault. Some turkeys are just shit.

I've never understood why people don't want the legs but there's more for me yum yum. Until this year when I bought a relatively small supermarket turkey (although Norfolk bronze, free range blah blah) to have on Boxing Day as we were out Xmas day. The legs were tough and full of what I call hat pins! The legs were horrid. Because we usually buy a ginormous one for lots of people, the legs are big and the hat pins not a problem.

In the past I've sometimes cooked the turkey upside down until the last half hour, to stop the breast being dry. However it's a major operation to turn a big, very hot turkey upside down while still cooking.

This year - smaller one at 5.5 kg - after cooking I turned it upside down to rest (well wrapped up) for the usual hour before sitting down to eat. That worked well too - breast was not dry at all. Will def. do again.

I tried the upside down method for the first time this year. Flipping heck it was difficult to get the right way up again. It had elements of a comedy sketch in the making.