Posted on 11/21/2021 8:38:10 AM PST by mylife
Purchasing and preparing the turkey for Thanksgiving has taken on a kind of mythical status through the years. It's a big hunk of poultry that you only cook once a year, so taking the care to properly store, thaw, and cook the big bird in time for a glorious entrance to the harvest table can be tricky. While it may not be as easy to control for seasonings, cooking times, and temperatures, there is one easy way to start off your Thanksgiving feast preparation on the right foot: Buy the best bird.
To help you decide which turkey to buy for this Thanksgiving, we bought, roasted, and tasted five brand-name frozen turkeys from the supermarket. We had taste testers judge the birds based on tenderness, texture, and flavor to determine a winner.
Here's how we did it. We visited three local grocery stores—Food Lion, Harris Teeter, and Whole Foods—to source our big birds. They were all frozen and ranged in the 12–14-pound range. Two of the birds were not injected or didn't have any added salt, while the other three were already brined in the bag.
(Excerpt) Read more at eatthis.com ...
Butterball
Verdict: If you failed to secure a turkey before Thanksgiving and this is all that’s left, it’s a fine choice but it’s not going to bring rave reviews.
Shady Brook Farms
Verdict: This one was pumped full of brine and additives, so it had a nice flavor, but the flesh didn’t have that nice mouthfeel; therefore, it’s a decent bird but not a standout.
Harris Teeter
Verdict: A great choice and certain Thanksgiving-crowd pleaser as long as you (and your guests) don’t mind the addition of sodium phosphate.
Nature’s Rancher
Verdict: If you don’t want to spend the extra money for an organic bird, which can range from $3.99 a pound or more, this is a great choice with good flavor. Just do your own home brine before cooking to amp up the moistness.
Organic Prairie
Verdict: With no additives of any kind and being USDA certified organic, the only thing this bird fell a little short on was moisture. But that’s easy enough to remedy with a home brine, and then you get the ultimate tender turkey that also tastes like real meat and not mush.
Food Lion?
Thanks for the summation.
How we did it
For how we cooked the turkey, we kept it super simple to remove a lot of variables that could possibly skew results. We went with a recipe that includes “spatchcocking” the bird, which is just cutting out the spine, flipping the bird over and pressing down on the breastbone until it cracks, allowing you the flatten it out on a roasting tray. This allows for quicker cooking, and a more even roast because the cool and moist inner cavity is no longer skewing how fast or slow certain parts (legs versus breast) get cooked to the proper temperature.
We dried the bird, applied a tablespoon of canola oil to each side along with two tablespoons of freshly ground black pepper, and, for the turkeys that weren’t brined, one tablespoon of Kosher salt.
Our oven was set to 450 degrees and after an hour of cooking, a Bluetooth meat thermometer was stuck deep into the breast and set with a 150-degree alarm. Once that went off—most of them only took about an hour and a half to cook—the legs were then checked to make sure they hit the 165-degree mark. When all temps were OK, the bird was taken out and left to rest for 5 minutes before carving and taste testing.
Each taste tester was given skin-on breast meat along with a chunk of leg and thigh meat. They were tasked with studying the meat for tenderness, texture, and flavor, and then ranked each according to a one-to-five scale and they wrote down comments.
Welcome! Happy Turkey Day to you and yours
Major grocery chain.
My sister discovered roasting the bird upside down.
It works.
I do that too.
I don’t have any of those stores near me and the only brand I saw that I might be able to get is Butterball.
Buy whatever, but I suggest brining and injection.
It’s hit or miss. Had a disappointing butterball one year, and a fantastic Safeway branded turkey another year. Just the luck of the draw.
I has never heard of spatchcocking, so I looked for a video...
https://greatist.com/eat/how-to-spatchcock-turkey-best-way-to-cook-thanksgiving-turkey
You’re a braver man than I, Gunga Din.
THE best? HONEYSUCKLE hands down.
Publix Store Brand Turkey from Publix... On sale this week for 49 cents a pound... a twelve pound turkey for less than six dollars... Cheap and delicious.
FWIW, we got a turkey for .49 cents a pound at Krogers.
We’ve always used Plainville turkeys if possible.
If not, then Wegmans who gets their turkeys from Plainville.
I have had good luck with anything local.
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