Turkey Tips

So this thanksgiving I cooked my first turkey - completely by myself. I have never cooked a turkey before, I much prefer to leave it in the hands of the more experienced. Despite that however, my Mother left me on thanksgiving with a raw turkey and instructions to have dinner ready by 7. I came across the Food Networks top 10 Turkey tips and decided to give them a try along with a few tricks I wanted to try. It was an adventure all right.

How I made my turkey:
1. Make sure the turkey is cleaned out (remove the neck and don't forget the packet of gizzards - I unfortunately couldn't find this in my turkey turns out it was just in the other end).
2. I gently separated the skin from the breast with my hand and rubbed some corse salt, italian seasoning, and pepper under the skin.
3. Then I put the skin back down and rubbed the top of the skin with butter - I buttered the entire turkey. (oh it was delicious skin).
4. Cut an apple and an onion in half and stuffed them into the chicken.
5. Now seal up the turkey, I used a "lacer" which was basically a spiral of wire to close one end and then as there was a gap were a wing had gone missing I used a few needles.
6. Then as I am terrified of dry breasts, I covered them with tinfoil.
7. I put the turkey in the oven at 350 and left it for just under 3 hours, removed the tinfoil and left for another 45 minutes (It was a 14lb turkey and took just over 3.5 hours to cook).

Oh was this good. The meat was cooked and still utterly moist and juicy. Oh how I loved my turkey, and I was very excited that I didn't end up with an almost burnt or raw bird. I am no longer scared of the turkey (which is good, as I have a 16 lb one sitting in my freezer - thanks mom), and I hope that I will be able to repeat the juicy meat on my next try! The next challenge is to figure out how to carve the turkey, hmmm.