Oven Roasted Turkey

Now that it's officially fall, turkey day is right around the corner. This recipe will produce a moist, delicious turkey every time. The only flaw is that you will not get crispy skin. I did a little research on how to get crispy skin and it sounded like too much trouble and it involved making sure the turkey was dry enough. However, it seems like people are always complaining about turkey being too dry. So, maybe one of these days I'll experiment and try to get a moist turkey and crispy skin but, so far I don't have a solution. Perhaps, turning on the broiler for 10 minutes or so at the end would do it. If you try it, let me know how it turned out. :)

Ingredients
Turkey
Olive oil
 

Equipment

Roasting pan

Aluminum foil
Basting brush

Instructions
If the turkey is frozen you must allow it to defrost in the refrigerator for about 2 days.

Pre-heat the oven to 325 deg. Put enough water in the roasting pan to cover the bottom of the pan. Pour some olive oil into a small dish and have a brush ready to apply the oil to the turkey.

Unwrap the turkey (there are usually cooking instructions on the wrapper or inside, save them) and remove giblets. Usually they are in bags inside the body cavity. Make sure to check both ends! Rinse the bird inside and out and pat dry with paper towels. Set it on the rack in the roasting pan, breast side up.

Coat the turkey with olive oil. Once the top side is done, flip it and coat the other side. This means you will be cooking the turkey breast side down, initially. Tent the turkey with aluminum foil. It's OK if it's open a little at the ends.

Check the directions that come with the turkey for cooking times. Typically it will be about 15 minutes per pound. Set a timer for one hour l less than the total cooking time.

When the timer goes off take the turkey out of the oven. Remove the aluminum foil (but save it for later) and flip the turkey so that it is breast side up. Put the turkey back in the oven and set the timer for 1 hour.

When the timer goes off, remove the turkey from the oven and allow it to rest about 15 minutes before carving. You can put the saved aluminum foil over the turkey to help keep it warm.