This year, the responsibility of hosting the annual family Thanksgiving dinner landed on my shoulders… two days before the big day (don’t you just love family?). I picked up a frozen Butterball turkey on the Saturday, and crossed my fingers that it would thaw out within the next 36 hours so that I would have time to prep it before putting it in the oven.

Despite my love of cooking, this marked the very first time that I prepared a turkey from start to finish on my own. I had to defrost it as quickly as possible. Ideally I would’ve left it in the fridge for a couple of days, but with dinner a little more than a day away I needed it to thaw out fast.

I didn’t want any chance of bacteria growing, thus giving my family food poisoning, so I knew I had to thaw it correctly. So I opted to put the big guy in a large pot of cold water, making sure that I replaced the cold water every couple of hours. Because this sucker was so big, I had to keep on rotating it in the wok I was using to thaw it out, but it worked: it was thawed out completely within 6 hours.

After removing the giblets and neck, I rinsed the turkey under cold water. Then it was on to the first flavouring step: a brine.

Turkey Brine Recipe

• 1 cup kosher salt
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 3 tbsp of whole black peppercorns
• 6 bay leaves
• 1 tbsp dried sage
• 1 tbsp dried thyme
• 1 tbsp dried onion flakes
• 2 tsp chopped garlic
• 3 cups water

I boiled all the ingredients together for a few minutes of minutes (until the salt and sugar dissolved), then took it off the heat to cool down. Once completely cool, I added the brine to about 4 litres of cold water. This was the “turkey bath”. I left the turkey to brine in the refrigerator overnight.

After I took the turkey out of the brine, I patted it dry.  I purchased a turkey baster that came with a flavour injector needle at the last Kitchen Stuff Plus warehouse sale. So I mixed together the following ingredients and injected it all over my turkey (concentrating on the “meaty” areas” then let it sit for an hour in the fridge:

Turkey Injection Marinade

• 1/4  cup chicken broth
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp each of paprika, oregano, onion powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper

The final step for my flavourful turkey project was the rub. I used a spatula to slide inbetween the skin and the meat of the turkey, so that I could make some room to add pads of unsalted butter. I also used some melted butter, along with some olive oil, to rub on the outside skin of the turkey (so that the rub had something to adhere to).

Note: I decided not to stuff my turkey, but make the stuffing separate. It helps speed up the cooking time. I just stuffed the cavity with a couple of halved onions, a few garlic cloves, and some slices of lemon.

Turkey Rub Recipe

• 1 tbsp paprika
• 1 tbsp onion powder
• 2 tsp garlic powder
• 2 tbsp of 5 peppercorn blend (green, pink, white and black peppercorns, and Jamaican allspice), crushed
• 2 tsp mustard seeds, crushed
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp ground ginger

Once the turkey was basted with the rub, I rested on a rack in the roasting pan, added some chicken broth to the bottom of the pan, and popped it in the oven, loosely covered with foil.

I had preheated my oven to 425F degrees. Then after cooking the turkey for 30 minutes, I lowered the heat to 350F. I basted every hour, taking the foil off during the last hour of cooking, and raising back up the heat to 425F, so that it can create a nice crust. 4.5 hours total baking time for this 12lb turkey.

It came out so flavourful, moist and delicious. If you’re trying to make a turkey (or whole chicken) and want to make sure that it doesn’t come out dry and tasteless, try using the previous three steps in order to roast a great turkey.