hi friends it's for Holly Smith and this is something I'm sure there's a ton of people doing on the internet right now but because you and I are friends we're gonna do this together but I'm going to show you how I prep my bird and it's not that hard it's actually pretty darn simple but if you haven't done it before or if you're just looking to see how other people do it or you just want to find a way that's different than what you're doing to try something new because you know over a couple years I like to try something new to I I feel like I am the master of the turkey I'm taking my ring off because that's gonna be a thing here I'm the master of the turkey I have been making the Thanksgiving turkey since it was fifteen because my mom worked in a restaurant and that was like the mandatory day to work so there was no way that she was gonna go to work and serve Thanksgiving dinner on like the most jammed-up day of the year and then try and cook at home that just wasn't gonna happen and she said that she was very I guess you know looking back that's totally reasonable like as a mom I'm serious no staying away that's gonna happen so I'm gonna show you what I do and this is essentially the same method that I use but I do change up the spices and actually since since I was fifteen I used to be like this is the directions on the package and now I have my own way of doing my turkey so let's get started right here we have some essential an entire stick of butter do not skip on the butter I know you're like what oh it wouldn't be big don't skimp on the butter and then I have a vessel the butter is going to go in you do need to let this soften some what it does not need to be like butter your biscuits soft like it's been sitting out for an hour but it does need to sit out for probably 15 or 20 minutes because we are going to mash this and this is going to be a lot of our seasoning it's also a fabulous trick to keeping your turkey breast delicious and moist so I'm going to just open this up and I use the most complicated tool ever right I am NOT into complicated I'm not in a specialty particularly I know that sometimes like having the right tool makes all the difference but I'm just gonna get my butter in here put my trash in the trash and we're gonna just start to break this guy down he's he's probably a little stiff I'm gonna turn the camera down so you can see that and what I want to do is I just want to start to kind of mash him up and loosen him he's still pretty stiff so and you can tell like the ends are much easier to mash than the center which is part of the reason that I'm kind of getting him up because it does make it easier to mash so the next step that we're going to do now that we just have a little bit of mash in here is we're gonna season the butter because this is going to stick so typically what I use is garlic powder onion powder salt pepper and sometimes I like a little bit of cayenne pepper like chili pepper chili powder it doesn't make it hot it it doesn't make a spicy you hear that it just it adds kind of like another complex layer of flavor so let's go get those in when I start adding them oh I have my all these black pepper this salt is also from all these this is a refilled all these container with garlic powder that is homemade that my mom dried and then I have some all these chili powder so as you can see none of this is real complicated and everything is essentially eyeball by me so I want to show you as I add it and if you want measurements you can go with about a half a teaspoon to 1 teaspoon also I'm just saying this is kind of silly there I'm probably putting in a whole teaspoon maybe two teaspoons I'm going to tell you that I'm not going to be shy with this either because garlic makes everything taste good and I'm pretty sure I'm putting in maybe a solid two tablespoons to three tablespoons or I'm sorry two teaspoons to three teaspoons three teaspoons is one tablespoon just so that you know and then we're gonna and then now this I'm gonna tell you this will make it hot whoo that that pepper is super finely ground and the finer ground it is probably about a teaspoon of salt as well is the hotter it will be just so that you know if you have like a less finely ground pepper you will be able to use more I'll show you a little trick if you get through this and you're like I'm doing this right now I need to do this right now I cannot wait I'm essentially I have my hot water turned on I'm just got my hand in here waiting for it to get really hot so this can help soften up your butter in a hurry all right I'm just gonna fill my bowl with hot water I mean this is like not not even hard all right and then set it down here and I'm gonna and yeah it's gonna overflow a little and that's just fine that's why we're in the sink but what it's gonna do is it's gonna heat up the sides it's gonna soften the butter that is around the container the edge and if you are just starting out and you just pull your butter out of the freezer or not freezer well yeah I guess it would work there too yeah I can see see how it like starts to pull away there it's already changed feel free to put your butter in a vessel and stick it in some warm water because look look at how the difference in that already like the edge the edge the outsides and essentially we're just gonna mash this so that's your that's your quick tip your your I'm in a hurry and how to make it work in a hurry if you if you didn't pull it out in time which if you use this trick it's really hard to not pull it out in time because it takes see how fast that is now like it just it's in all right I'm gonna bash this all right so that's asmik just mixed as I'm gonna do there are still some real blonde spots but for the most part you can see that this is well-seasoned so I'm going to set this off to the side I'm gonna put away my spices so that we can move on to the next step all right I have my birdie here literally I just took it out of the fridge i from my prep where I just put this in here there is nothing complicated about this and I will tell you that the CDC does not want you to wash your bird there you can you can actually look it up it's a poultry warning no chicken none of that they don't want you to wash it because essentially it spreads around the Salmonella bearing juices and even if this doesn't have Salmonella or it's not contaminated in any way if you spread the juices around and you don't get it cleaned up properly then it will infect your area so I'm gonna tell you that I don't do a lot of washing of my bird I'm going to actually clean it in this container so it will contain the mess and it will still bleach this entire area when I'm done I have kitchen shears that are specifically for food and these are gonna go in the dishwasher when I'm done so first and foremost we're going to release the bird so another thing that I'm gonna do I'm gonna get my trashcan here and I'm gonna bring it over and set it right next to me exactly for the reason that I just said so that there's no like accidental transfer anywhere that if it gets on the floor I don't bleach my floor's necessarily so I don't want to have a hot spot where the kids roll on it you know what I'm saying just you just don't want to do that so okay so this bird looking good it does have a turkey timer in there yeah turkey timers are nice but they will not tell you when your meat is beautiful and tender and delicious just when it's just cooked and it's not good enough that this has a plastic holder here if you have a plastic holder you must must must get it out if you have a metal hanger you can leave it in okay so when right away what we have here is our giblets and inside we're just that's what I got this out actually for I'm gonna put my neck in here I'm gonna move this camera because yep lots of fluid came out of there and that's okay and the reason is it's going to cook and it will heat any of that liquid up to a temperature where it will not see and I'm about to rinse my hands in the sink here so that things must be clean with the bleach we're gonna look inside of the bird and it's pretty gross and liquidy but there's nothing in this cavity the neck this neck was the only thing in that cavity so something that you need to know the food goes in one end it comes out the other which means there's a hole on one end and there is a hole on the other end and yes you must check them both because there's a surprise inside and I want to turn this image you can see it so mostly it's just a skin flap and that's your bag and then you can see that that is an empty cavity in there that's actually the breasts that you're seeing and if you look that's the wishbone right there okay so this bird is nice and empty now at this point if you wanted to stuff your bird in the front and in the back you could do that the next thing I'm going to do is get this out this can be a real struggle do not like raw turkey smell yeah actually stretched it okay not that up all right so now this bird my bird is completely thought because I planned ahead to to get this uh filmed and ready for you so I am going to show you what I'm going to do with and my hands are contaminated at this place so I'm going to be very limited and what I'm going to be touching outside of no you can do this with your hands that's cool I typically do this with directly with my hands but sometimes it's nice to get a little knife cut to start it off but what we need to do is separate the skin from the breast and you will be able once you get it started to uh just use your hand for it and we want to get around easier for you to see this I want to get in and it will have like a it's gonna want to not touch it over you might have to go in the other side you got to get way up in there I know it's not the prettiest thing little grody most people don't you know think about doing this with their turkey but you need that skin to be separate from the breast and you're about to get your hands dirty so just this mixture and again you wanted to be just a little soft but it doesn't have to be terribly soft and we are going to go in and apply this directly to the breast meat and that's gonna do two things it's gonna help it to be moister because that oil is not gonna evaporate off it will melt and get down in the juice and that's okey dokey but the other thing that it's gonna do is because this will stay where you place it see how you can you can actually move it around you're putting this butter on the meat but this butter is carrying that salt that pepper the garlic if you want and sage it'll you can put sage in there whatever seasoning you like on your bird it is going to hold it against the meat and hold it in place so that way your meat is going to be seasoned seasoned crispy skin it's stinking delicious don't get me wrong I love me some skin some crispy skin but really I mean the the main attraction is that Turkey and we want to see through this because white meat can be and we do want to you know get as much in here as possible because the fact is we can't use this butter anywhere else now that we've touched anything with it okay all right so now something that you're gonna want to know with this I like to get my bird in the right position hot water on and melt some of the sauce so my bird is prepared at this point I'm not worrying about drying this and the reason is I'm gonna put it in the fridge I recommend that you do this at least the night before because the skin will dry on its own you don't have to get a paper towel that's going to contaminate anything and carry around the kitchen you're not going to use a the same thing with a cloth towel where you have to put it to the laundry and it's got a bunch of stuff and they can worry about using bleach in that load and anything that touches and blah blah blah so the other thing that you need to know I know I keep saying that is that you need to be able to put a lid on this bird if your lid doesn't fit because your bird is too big no problem there is a there's a thing you can do for that what you want to do is just get some aluminum foil and tent it over the the bird and secure it on either end because what will happen is that keep the steam in and it will steam inside and it will keep this skin from browning too soon the last hour to 45 minutes that your bird is cooking you want to take your lid and or your foil tent off because that's when it's gonna Brown the bird and that's gonna give it that perfectly golden brown look instead of the bird shriveled look which you don't want I know a lot of people tuck their their turkey these ends down here like this feel free to do that if you want but I actually really like mine is super done and I like to know on them I don't share them with people this part down here won't necessarily have a bad problem this is these wingtips are going to be the the problem now I can also tell you that when I put this in the oven I'm gonna add six cups of water to this so while the liquid level is really low right now it's essentially a turkey fluid it's gonna come up to about here so all of all of this is totally in the way all of this part will be under water and it won't be a problem this will get done before everything else it just is the way the turkey is if you are stuffing your turkey your turkey is gonna take significantly longer to cook so you want to make sure that you pay attention to that I do not stuff my bird because I like my bird eat I don't why I'm gonna ketogenic diet and gosh it just makes it take so much more longer oh not that I know please know that I am totally a long cooker of a turkey because I am of that school that puts it in for 250 at 250 and then lets it cook for like ever I get up I actually set an alarm and put my turkey in at 3 a.m. and and that way it's done at like 10:00 or 11:00 at noon I like a lot of hours of cooking I almost cook it like the night before like all night because that low and slow it cooks the bird it like the juices just don't all run out of it it doesn't dehydrate it terribly and it just is beautiful and it just tastes better it's just really a better tasting bird so I of that school as well you do need to cook it a really long time like almost like 10 hours so sometimes I even get up at 1:00 a.m. it just depends on how big my bird is this is a much smaller bird than I usually get I usually get a 20 pound bird but my mom found this in her freezer and it's like please take this I have too much stuff in here so and then just on a humorous note she called me this morning she's like I found another turkey in my freezer I didn't even know I had anyway so I'm gonna put this in my refrigerator with a lid on it so that nothing comes into contact with it and then essentially it's just going to like season and meld the meat for at least to 24 hours which is the best case scenario so that's how I prepare my bird it's a very very simple so I hope you enjoyed this I hope it was helpful questions down below let me know if this you know is what you're gonna be doing what let me know how you do it are you an upside down turkey roaster I know a lot of people are that's just not my thing I need that skin to be like beautiful and crispy so I'm gonna start to get cleaned up and I will see you next time bye guys