Easy Baked Turkey Recipe 🦃 How To Bake a Whole Turkey For Thanksgiving

Welcome back to Snow Dogs Cooking where if I can cook it so can you because trust me I suck at cooking. Today we're gonna show you guys a really easy way to make a turkey. So Thanksgiving is coming here in the states and I thought a lot of people have no idea how to make a turkey. I was one of those people just a couple of years ago I made a turkey for the very first time and it turned out awesome and this is the recipe that I used so we're gonna show you guys how to make really good roasted turkey. We have our thawed turkey this is a 13 pound turkey so here's your reminder to take your turkey out of the freezer. The general rule is it takes about one day per five pounds of turkey for it to thaw so this was a 13 pound turkey. I actually left it in the refrigerator for four days. Don't leave it out on your counter put it in your fridge and then that way even if it does thaw you still have a few days before you have to make it. So I left this in the fridge for four days just to be safe and it just completely thawed. About an hour before you are going to get ready to put this into your oven you are going to want to set it on your counter. You kind of want to get to get to about room temperature and I'll show you why in just a minute. Well there you are best kitchen helper second best kitchen helper gotta find third best kitchen helper before we go over anything else where could she well there she is and then fourth best kitchen helper is out grabbing more stuff. While he's doing that I'm gonna go over the ingredients real quick hey look best kitchen helper okay so what you're gonna need you're gonna need a turkey this recipe will work for like a 12 to 20 pound turkey ours is 13 pounds you are going to need a lemon you're gonna need an apple you're gonna need an onion our onion is already quartered then you're gonna need some fresh rosemary some fresh thyme some fresh sage if you don't have fresh you can just use the stuff that comes in your shaker that's perfectly fine you're also gonna need one whole stick of softened butter and some garlic okay you can use regular garlic but I use garlic because it's easy okay first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna open up all of these what are they called spices and we're gonna wash them and then we're gonna cut them up and I got a bowl for each of them and yes it does matter wash them cut them up you're such great helpers you really are because the first thing we're gonna do besides that is we're gonna make the herbed butter that is step one step one technically should be preheat your oven to 325 but if we do that these two would stay well I guess Kira's not in here anyway cool step one preheat your oven 325 all right so sage first all we did was rinse the leaves and then just kind of cut it up it doesn't need to be super fine again we're using fresh sage and then now we're working on the time everybody needs more time and basically here Jamie already washed these but I'm gonna pretty much show you how you strip time here do it again because I missed that shot just like that and then there's time it smells like Thanksgiving in here and we've only worked with these two things yeah these are major ingredients yeah so we're gonna go ahead and finish putting all those into the dishes okay so the phone rang a we have our rosemary we have our thyme we have our sage and we're gonna need about a tablespoon of each of these to go in with this beautiful butter that I squashed out of the package it is room temperature can you tell can you tell that my fingers went so now we're gonna mix a tablespoon of that yeah about a tablespoon of that and it doesn't have to be like a perfect tablespoon yeah there's a tablespoon of that a tablespoon of the sage a tablespoon of the rosemary don't worry the rest of the rosemary is going in your next batch of bone broth and then a tablespoon of thyme and then so if you're not going to use garlic and you're going to use regular minced garlic like four to six cloves you know you always measure your garlic with your heart but we're using this and Jamie's not as big of a fan as garlic and I am so we're gonna add I don't know like half a tablespoon because I would use like four times the amount of garlic that you use but I'll let you put it in there to your heart's desire I just do a heap of a table or half tables there you go oh we'll see and now we're gonna mixy this together and like I said it is just softened butter so kind of just you just want it all mixed together this is going to go underneath the skin of our turkey and if it's still not super softened in the middle we just set it over there and it'll get there now we're gonna take our apple and we're gonna quarter this okay maybe because we have nothing to give the dogs you should cut a slice off of it and the dog should get a piece of apple she's like I would totally take a piece of that apple you're kind of stuck there in the corner huh don't move you'll trip over some dogs okay chipper tappers oh yes yes I will go give it to the third best kitchen helper ever yes princess you get some too don't worry now we're gonna wash our hands now we're gonna quarter this lemon peel and all we washed it first of course and then we're gonna quarter that and that's gonna go in this bowl don't worry we're gonna show you what we're gonna do with all these things okay it's time to prep the turkey open it up I got a bowl because we're gonna take the stuff from the inside out and uh a lot of people will use it to make gravies and different types of things all the inside parts of our turkeys go to the dogs it's going in bone broth or getting made into something it's going to you girls don't worry about it the weirdest part about making a turkey is getting past this part or chicken or anything else holy cow the dogs are like you could just give that to us we would totally just eat that yeah I'm sure you would so this is the trick you got one hand that's got turkey juice on it you got one hand that's perfectly clean now we're gonna take and we're gonna season the inside of this with a little bit of salt and pepper that's why we wanted to make sure to have a clean hand yeah I don't want to touch my salt and pepper shaker yeah dirty poultry yep so put some pepper in there put some salt in there and then you're gonna have two dirty hands again after that yeah and yes we are using a bowl to prop the turkey up so we're done with those now we're gonna take everything here and stuff it inside that that turkey okay well at least as much as you can fit ours is a little on the small side so if you want to start with a piece of this a piece of this a just a piece just throw it in there just like that quartered it can just be in there you don't have to crush it yep then some of that you're fancier than me when I did it the first time I just put all of this then all of this then all of this but you'll give it layers yeah I actually probably even mix it and then put it in there you could and then don't forget your apples and your lemons we're just gonna stuff this sucker full a little bit more of this on there more of that more of that perfection look at that so much good stuff yeah it's like a shish kebab but in the bottom of the turkey and basically what this is gonna do by filling the turkey as it roasts all of these flavors and smells kind of roast together and really give that aromatic flavor to your turkey that's what we're doing in case you're wondering now we are using a traditional roasting pan with a rack in the bottom that raises it a little bit this is a rack from a different pan but it's gonna work just fine you want to make sure that your turkey is raised off of the bottom of whatever type of roasting pan you use because you don't want it to burn to the bottom of your pan all right we have the turkey in the pan the next thing we're gonna do remember that yummy herbed butter that we made we're gonna put about a tablespoon on each side of the breast up here so you can see jamie's kind of just pulling the skin back a little bit you know yeah there you go and then we're gonna take about a tablespoon so not all of it and you're gonna kind of shove it in there that's how i did it when i did it before and then you can kind of rub it in a little bit you want to do that on each side and then we're gonna take the rest of the butter and we're gonna rub it all around the outside there you go there you go get it in there so as that cooks that's gonna kind of come back a little bit and be amazing so we're gonna show you the next step in just a second look at this dog she's like oh my gosh give me all the turkeys please okay so the remaining butter you can melt it if you want to or you can do just what we're doing ours is soft enough that we can kind of just put it on there you want to make sure to get the skin on the top you want to coat the legs as much as you can it's gonna melt it's gonna melt pretty good but it's also gonna brown everything as it does that's the next thing i want to tell you guys about while jamie's doing this i'll just explain it i have a cover for this if you don't have a cover for your roasting pan you're gonna want to use aluminum foil and make a tent over this now i know a lot of guys are probably asking about what about the crispy turkey skin the last little bit of cooking it you'll take the tent off and you will brown the skin but keeping it covered is going to keep your turkey moist that is a mistake a lot of people make they try to cook it like this with no lid and yeah because they want crispy skin and then you end up with dry turkey the last thing we want is dry turkey yeah gotta get it all over in there this is gonna be so good and look at look at this so much easier than you thought it was gonna be right like this was one of the easiest recipes i read for how to make a turkey and i've made it twice with this recipe so hopefully it's gonna turn out again and hopefully it'll turn out for you guys as well this is just like the it is it is it's perfect you can also do chicken this way if you want to just saying it looks pretty good with our oven preheated to 325 we are gonna put this in the oven now so the general rule for cooking a turkey is 12 to 15 minutes per pound this is a 13 pound turkey which means we should do this for about three and a half hours is what we're guessing the turkey needs to come to 165 degrees so you also want to keep an eye on it you know check it every once in a while and see what the temperature is this does have a temperature pop thing which should pop out when it comes to temperature but i don't always trust these i always do still test them as well because we're putting the lid on this what we're gonna do is at the last hour of cooking the lid's gonna come off and then that's gonna brown all of that beautiful skin that looks pretty good i don't want to eat it raw but like that looks pretty good right it's gonna change real quick as soon as it gets warm it's gonna smell even more amazing in here in just a matter of minutes all right let's put the lid on and put it in the oven all right into the oven it goes okay camera magic you guys don't have to wait it'll be done in like one second okay we got an hour left we're taking the lid off we already got a little bit of brown on the top i think that's where the lid was touching it it is definitely close okay we're gonna put it back in slide it in our left time to start everything else all right turkeys out of the oven our little popper thing actually popped oh i might have went through it yeah don't go through it and make sure you're not in a bone we want this to be at 155 at least we're good so now we're gonna let this sit and rest for about 15 to 20 minutes look at all the juices everything looks so good and of course we're making other stuff as well look at this kitchen helper she's like hello how come i'm not getting anything don't worry you're gonna get a bite of turkey all right so now that this has rested we are gonna carve the turkey but guess what i'm not i'm not giving you guys instructions on how to do that because we're not very good at it it's pretty easy there's a breastbone oh yeah you're gonna do it this time okay you want to show them how here and you carve on each side and that'll be these two big chunks and you just hack off these big legs okay after that after those four pieces it'll carve itself okay all right let's see if we can do this it sounds like it's gonna be nice and juicy like we want i'm gonna film you like this i know i might mess up your carving a little bit oh look at that beautiful all right you cut that up i'm gonna make the rest of the stuff told you we made a whole thanksgiving meal but the most important part the part that you guys want to know the most Jamie ate the skin already a little bit of it yeah it's pretty crunchy and good so chicken or chicken turkey skin is your thing yeah yeah it's very moist it smells amazing look at i take take this little tiny amount of stuffing because it's not my favorite thing it's crazy i know hi kira so i already tried it you did i know even without anything on it i know it's so good it's not dry it's exactly what you want for a thanksgiving turkey what do you think huh i think i should get a piece yeah you want to try mine too bad looks great jess good job hey we did it together we did here's a quick tip for you as well you see the top of this turkey this is the turkey that was directly underneath the skin where we put all that butter and stuff that's gonna have all of those seasonings and everything on it so if you want to feed any to your dog take that piece flip it over and take from the middle gee it's almost like they know they're getting a bite one for you one for you and yes one for you is that good stuff is that the best turkey ever they mopped out so delicious and that is how you make a thanksgiving turkey super easy super simple there's a lot of different ways you can do this this is roasted in the oven it was one of the easiest ways i found like i said if i can cook it so can you i am not good at cooking and this is now the third time i've made a turkey like this and it has turned out perfect if you guys end up making this let us know down in the comments below if you have questions about this recipe leave them in the comments i'll do my best to answer them and let us know what you want to see next all right you guys we hope you enjoyed today's video as always thanks so much for watching thanks for subscribing stay positive dream big and we will say memphis wants more turkey she's like give me some more turkey i know say goodbye