The Minnesota Way to Make a Thanksgiving Turkey

When it comes to roasting turkeys, at my old age, I am probably hands-down one of the best preparers of a turkey, along with all of the fixings of a Thanksgiving feast, or at least that’s my belief based on feedback from a bunch of drunk people. Because if you can’t trust a bunch of drunk people to tell you the truth, come on, who in the hell can you trust? I didn’t need any fancy roasting bags or store-bought dry bread crumbs, I prepared my turkeys the old-fashioned way, the way that today could kill you because it was stuffed, tied and stored overnight in the icebox. Today, it’s not a good idea to let the bloody innards of a turkey, regardless of how many times you rinsed, sit stuffed and raw in the ‘frig.

Health issues, life or death aside, I would like to share with you my Minnesota recipe for how to make a Thanksgiving turkey. When I was old enough in the 1950s to stand on a step-stool to reach the stove, maybe about 5 or 6, I started learning how to cook for my family. That’s one of the reasons my parents had kids. So, we could cook meals, clean the house and shovel snow.

My Minnesota Recipe to Make a Thanksgiving Turkey

First, you have to let a couple bags of good ol’ Wonder bread sit open for a week or so to dry out. The night before, grab a big mixing bowl, the bags of stale bread and plop yourself down in front of a good TV Western and start crumbling bread. All the action is between your first two fingers and thumbs. Simmer the turkey giblets — gizzard, heart, neck and liver — in a cup of water on the stove for about an hour. Brown a 16-ounce package of pork sausage in a cast-iron skillet, stir in chopped celery (with the tops) and onions until soft. Flavor the bread crumbs with sage, bit of thyme and poultry seasoning, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Chop the giblets, add to the dressing but the feed the liver to the cat. Mix all the ingredients with your hands and add water from the giblets to moisten.

Taste the stuffing by licking off your hands. Then stuff a few more handfuls into your mouth for good measure, and drop a glob on the floor for the dog to enjoy. Take your father’s toothbrush, brush the dog’s teeth and put it back in the bathroom without rinsing it, on purpose.

Rinse the turkey thoroughly and completely, salt the interior and pat dry the exterior. Stuff the front and back, but not too packed because dressing will expand when roasting. Sew up the turkey back with a needle and thread. Using skewers, tie the front of the turkey with string, by criss crossing the skewers; tie up the turkey legs. Tie up the turkey wings. Rub oil all over, salt, pepper and stick in a 325-degree oven under a tent of aluminum foil. Roast about 20 minutes a pound, basting every hour and removing the foil to allow the turkey to brown the last few hours. Check temperature with a meat thermometer. When the breast temperature reaches 165, remove the pan from the oven and let sit for an hour. It will continue to cook as you make the potatoes, vegetables and gravy.

Do not set the pan on the oven door or you could cause your stove to tip over. Use oven mitts and wear long sleeves, unless you have tattoos.

I cannot count how many roast turkeys I have prepared in my life, hundreds though. When I was a kid in Minnesota we always had big family Sunday dinners, not just on Thanksgiving, so we often had turkey. Oddly, preparing a turkey dinner was my parental-inflicted punishment when I did something wrong — to make a turkey — because my father thought it was something I did not like to do. I never let on that I enjoyed cooking.

After you make as many turkeys as I have, you’ve got the procedure down pat, and you don’t make any mistakes. Experience counts. Just like an experienced this Sacramento Realtor can do after selling hundreds of homes every year. You get a pro who won’t mess up your real estate transaction.

Or, you can just go out for a turkey dinner or to somebody else’s house on Thanksgiving and let other people fuss over you. Which is what I do nowadays. This way I also do not feel obligated to finish off the leftovers for weeks on end. But I do kinda miss grabbing cold dressing out of the ‘frig and stuffing it into my mouth.