Fat Cat trys Catnips Cookbook's Perfect Turkey

The Perfect Turkey

The turkey starts with the stuffing. I buy a loaf of bread that is a little denser than french bread, but not full of whole grains and cut off the crust and cube it and dry it in in the oven. Then I take a big slab of butter and melt that in a large iron pot. I add bay leaves (2 small ones from my potted trees), timian and sage. The smell of these herbs is heavenly and for me the essence of a good turkey. Then I sauté diced onion (about a cup), diced celery and at the end sliced fresh mushrooms. I add the dried bread cubes and mix. This I stuff in both cavities of the turkey. The small cavity usually has loose skin around it which keeps the stuffing in place, but I use a slice of bread to keep the stuffing in place in the big cavity. This is a tip I learned from my mother.
The beauty of turkey is the lack of fat, but this can be a problem roasting it. I take a piece of clean white cloth (for many years I used my stash of cloth diapers up this way) and cut it to be able to drape over the whole turkey. Then I rinse it thoroughly to make sure there is no detergent left (5 times). I melt some butter in a little water and moisten the cloth with this. Then I drape the turkey before putting it in the oven. The oven is preheated hot and then turned down for baking. The turkey sits on a rack with the cloth over it the entire baking time. My cookbook says 20 minutes to the pound for large turkeys. I continually baste the cloth. First with butter and then with pan drippings. The turkey gets perfectly golden brown under the cloth and stays moist this way.

Fat Cat says: This worked for me. See my delicious big turkey!