COOK | Quick-Cooking Roasted Thanksgiving Turkey with Easy Herb Butter

COOK
Quick-Cooking Roasted Thanksgiving Turkey
with Easy Herb Butter

Our friendsgiving tradition has been going strong for six years now. Every year Josh and I handle the turkey, gravy, and rosemary rolls {OMG the rosemary rolls! read more here}. We’ve tried a couple of different seasoning and cooking methods throughout the years. We’ve brined, we’ve super slow cooked, we’ve fast then slow cooked, we’ve stuffed, we’ve slaughtered, and we’ve smothered.

The seasoning and cooking method that we continue to come back to time and time again for its jam-packed fall flavor and SUPER EASY and crazy time -saving process is… a smothering of homemade herb butter on a spineless turkey.

Yes, I said spineless, stay with me here… We follow the spatchcocking method for preparing then roasting our turkey. It cuts the cooking time down significantly and allows your white and dark meat to cook on a more even playing field. {hmm… literally…}

For how-to’s on the spatchcocking madness: view tutorials here.

While a spineless bird is quite interesting, it is the crazy-easy and oh-so-fancy herb butter that keeps the meat super moist and full of flavor. And it makes me feel like I really put in some hard-earned Thanksgiving effort 😉

Thanksgiving Turkey Homemade Herb Butter Recipe

INGREDIENTS

1 Package of Prepared FRESH Poultry Herbs {seriously, thank you grocery stores for doing this each year. Thank you}
2 Heads of Garlic
2 Sticks of Unsalted Butter
Poultry Seasoning
Olive Oil
Roasting Aromatics {fresh lemon, more herbs, onion, celery, apple, etc}

Allow your butter to come to room temperature. My favorite method for this is to place a wrapped stick of butter on a previously warm stove eye. But the microwave and good old preparedness works here too.

2. Finely chop your fresh herb mixture. I love the prepared mix of sage, thyme, and rosemary. We inherited a giant rosemary bush, so I add in extra sprigs.

3. While your butter is softening and your are chopping your herbs, roast two heads of garlic. Don’t give up on me just yet. This year I learned a trick to roasting garlic in the MICROWAVE! The microwave people! Yes oh yes! Here are the instructions from The Kitchn. {PS You will need a bit of olive oil and salt for this step}

4. Squeeze your warmed, roasted garlic cloves into a bowl with the chopped herbs and softened butter. Begin to combine all of the flavors and add dried poultry seasoning as needed – I freaking live for dried poultry seasoning, I think the smell just fills me with such warm family memories. Umm anyways… Be careful not to over-mix – you are looking for a spreadable consistency – no chunks of anything.

5. Next you will push the herb and garlicked butter under the skin of the breasts and thighs. Use your pointer finger to gently release the skin from the meat, then push pads of butter into the areas and spread from the outside. Don’t worry about it being perfect – just get it as smothered as you can!

6. Cover your bird with some of the herb butter as well. This will help create a beautiful golden color. You can cut your butter mixture with a bit of olive oil for this step if you want to temper the browning process a bit.

Tip: I like to reserve a small pure and uncontaminated spoonful or two or the butter. I let it melt, thin it with turkey stock, chicken stock, and/or olive oil and use it to baste the turkey during the cooking process. The more tasty butter, the better!

7. We lay our spineless bird on a rack over a bed of herbs, lemon wedges, onions, celery, carrots, etc – whatever we have leftover!

8. Roast according to the directions that you are using!

The bird comes out tasting so bright and fresh thanks to the herbs, and so decadent and moist thanks to the butter and roasted garlic. It’s a winning combination!

Oh – and don’t forget that reduced cooking time and ease of carving thanks to a spineless bird! Woooo!

Happy Thanksgiving!

// amanda macy