Birds are not my specialty, not whole ones for certain. I even had a pet bird as a child that I let die. Well, in my defense it was born with a defect and I had to bottle feed it and I was 9 and forgot a day or two to feed it.
But cooking birds, I am and have always been dreadful at. To the point if we don’t go out for a holiday dinner, our family eats ham instead. But I found a good deal on an eight pound whole turkey roaster sized and I thought, let’s give it a go. I built my confidence up by watching a lot of cooking clips on how to do a bird right and the big kicker seemed to fall into these two steps – keep it moist, and remember it keeps on cooking after you turn off the heat. I love citrus flavours so I bought a can of orange juice frozen concentrate and a bottle of wine and figured if all else fails I could serve wine with the meal to the point no one was sober enough to taste the bird.
Ingredients
1 16 ounce can of frozen orange juice concentrate
1 cup white wine
1 stick salted butter
seasoning blend
For my seasoning blend I mixed 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, 1/4 teaspoon ginger, 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper, 1/2 teaspoon fresh rosemary, 1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme, 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder.
I decided to leave the twine netting on the bird for the cooking process and I laid the thawed bird into a baking dish. Using my hands I packed the frozen orange juice entirely over the whole body. I then poured the wine over the bird and I covered it with foil and allowed it to bake for 3 hours at 175 degrees F.
I uncovered it and basted it with the run off and then sprinkled my seasoning blend over top of it and upped the temperature to 225. After another hour I began basting it with the stick of butter every fifteen minutes for the next two hours.
I removed the netting and drained the juices from the pan and cooked it for thirty minutes more at 350 degrees.
I removed it from the oven and let it sit for about fifteen minutes before slicing it.
It was beautiful and it tasted heavenly.
I’m not sure I am ready for a big bird yet but this roaster turkey was a great start!
