| Level: | Easy |
| Total: | 4 hr 55 min |
| Prep: | 40 min |
| Inactive: | 15 min |
| Cook: | 4 hr |
| Yield: | 25 servings |
Ingredients
- 1 20-pound turkey
- Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
- 2 heads garlic
- 1 small onion, cut into 6 wedges
- 2 cooking apples, quartered
- 1 large bunch fresh sage
- 1 small bulb fennel, cut into 6 wedges
- 1 small carrot, cut into 3-inch pieces
- 4 sticks unsalted butter
- 8 cups low-sodium chicken or turkey broth
- 4 bay leaves
- 1/4 cup instant flour (such as Wondra)
- 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
Instructions
- Bring the turkey to room temperature 1 hour before roasting. Place a rack in the lowest position of the oven and remove the other racks; preheat to 350. Remove the neck and giblets from the turkey; discard the liver and reserve the neck and the rest of the giblets. Dry the turkey inside and out with paper towels and season the cavity with salt and pepper. Halve 1 head garlic crosswise and stuff into the cavity along with 3 onion wedges, the apples and 1/2 bunch sage.
- Place the remaining 3 onion wedges, the fennel and carrot in the center of a large roasting pan with 1 cup water. Set a rack above the vegetables and place the turkey breast-side up on the rack. Season all over with salt and pepper. Chop 3 tablespoons sage, then melt 3 sticks butter with the sage and salt and pepper to taste in a saucepan over medium heat. Fill a meat syringe with the sage butter and inject it into the breasts, legs and thighs; continue until you have used about half of the sage butter. Brush the bird with the rest of the butter and tie the legs together with twine.
- Roast the turkey, uncovered, about 1 hour 30 minutes. Rotate the pan and continue roasting until a thermometer inserted into the thigh registers 165, 1 hour 30 minutes to 1 hour 45 minutes. Turn off the oven but leave the turkey inside until the thermometer registers 170, 15 to 20 more minutes.
- While the turkey roasts, make the gravy: Melt the remaining 1 stick butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the reserved neck and giblets, season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until brown, about 10 minutes. Peel and smash the remaining head of garlic, add it to the pan and cook until golden, about 2 minutes. Add the broth and bay leaves, cover and simmer over medium-low heat, about 2 hours. Discard the bay leaves, neck and giblets.
- Transfer the turkey to a cutting board and let rest 20 to 30 minutes before carving. Transfer the vegetables to a blender. Pour the drippings into a liquid measuring cup and skim off the fat. Add 1 cup drippings and the flour to the blender and puree until smooth. Whisk the remaining drippings and pureed vegetables into the broth mixture. Bring to a boil, then simmer until the gravy is smooth, about 10 minutes. Stir in the balsamic vinegar; season with salt and pepper.
- Transfer the turkey to a platter and garnish with any remaining sage. Carve the turkey and serve with the gravy.
Reviews
This is my favorite recipe and I make it over and over again. The gravy is done just the way my grandmother used to make it.
By far our favorite turkey and gravy recipe! My family makes it every Thanksgiving. I suggest making the gravy ahead of time because it takes 2 hours.
I hosted Thanksgiving for the first time last year, and this recipe was what I used to make my first turkey in my life, and my mother who has been doing it for DECADES said it was the best she had ever had and gave me the job of turkey cooking from here on out! The gravy is the best I have ever tasted and also got rave reviews at dinner, needed a little extra work at thickening before it was ready but the end result was unbelievable. Simple recipe, super easy to succeed, excellent results. I highly recommend this for beginners.
Am I the only one who even attempted the gravy? I have to assume that I am, since none of the others mention it. TOTAL FAILURE – DO NOT ATTEMPT.
First of all, it’s meant to simmer for two hours, much longer than the traditional gravy that you whip up after the bird comes out of the oven. So that threw me off. But even so, it simmered a good hour, and still all I ended up with was a turkey soup containing $10 of organic broth, and too much garlic to make it edible.
The turkey itself was good, very moist and juicy.
We brined last year, and this was comparable.
I invested in fresh bird, so that probably helped.
Not sure it was worth the $14 I spent on the meat injector, but certainly not a failure.
Luckily I had enough drippings to make the traditional gravy.
But the simmering pot of gravy was a huge stress — competed for space with the mashed potatoes and cranberries that I was also doing, stove top, and around threw off my timing and caused major stress. Who needs it?
I decided to try this recipe because it sounded good with lots of aromatic flavors-so where did I go wrong? I followed the recipe and read the reviews;used chicken stock instead of water in the pan. What did I get? A very moist tasteless bird. Hmmm! I can’t figure out where I went wrong. Should I have used real butter and not margrine sticks? Did I not use enough fresh sage in the butter? Did I not awaken the herb correctly by rubbing them together to bring out the aromas? I honestly don’t know. I want a do overs but I think I’ll try another recipe.
All that butter? Is there no other way?
This is the best turkey and gravy I have ever had! Simple recipe and perfectly moist. I used chicken stock for the bottom of the pan and I did forget to add the balsamic vinegar to the gravy but it was still absolutely delicious! I am keeping this for my personal recipe book to use for the annual Turkey Day feast!
I made this last year for Thanksgiving and am making it this year again! It was super moist & flavorful & my family all said it was the best turkey they have ever had. 🙂
This was the most moist turkey I’ve ever had. The injections made the difference. The only thing we did differently from the recipe was to use cheesecloth drenched in butter and white wine surrounding the turkey for all of the cooking time except the last hour. I believe it kept in even more moisture and the last hour the turkey browned beautifully. We will definitely use this recipe every holiday.
I did not have a syringe so after stuffing the cavity with the aromatics, I lathered the exterior with olive oil, salt and pepper. I also put chicken stock into the roasting pan instead of water. I basted the turkey periodically with this and the drippings as well as covered the breasts with foil half-way through cooking time to prevent over-browning. The turkey was very moist and the aromatics were a perfect symphony of flavor.