You must go forth, find mud, and make fossils. Then have the rest as turkey sandwiches, which can be a splendid thing.
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I added the sourdough burger bun recipe above @Captbnut
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Iām not fond of turkey. I generally find it much too dry. But the Christmas before last I roasted one slowly in my patio heater and that was pretty good.
But not so good that Iām not doing beef this year.
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Thanks. Iāll check it out
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That is the canonical error of turkey-roasting. I know several people who manage to avoid it, apparently without effort, but I donāt know what their special technique is.
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I too have heard tell of non-dry turkey, presumably the secret is to bard it in the fat of an even larger animal and then saute it for 3 weeks in a swimming pool of melted butterā¦ but Iāve yet to test one done by this method
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Iāve been fooling around with borscht.
Tonight I boiled a medium-large beetroot in lightly salted water (which took an hour and a half). And I removed the husks and silk from two cobs of sweet corn and boiled them until they went a dark golden colour. I sliced a medium-large brown onion into thin slices, then fried that in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, with a teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper and half a teaspoon of powdered cummin seeds in the bottom of a saucepan. When the onions were translucent I added a 500-gram brick of frozen chicken stock and turned the heat high. I cut all the kernels off the cobs of maize. When the beetroot was tender I peeled it, cut it into a julienne, added it to the saucepan, and then let that simmer until the beetroot was soft. I purƩed the result with a stab mixer, brought it back to the boil, stirred in the corn kernels, and ladled portions into two large bowls. I garnished each bowl of soup with a tablespoon of Greek yoghurt, a sprinkle of freeze-dried dill tips, and a sprinkle of ground smoked paprika.
I ought to have used the white bowls with the blue spots instead of the blue-grey Chinese bowls.
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And it STILL tasted of beetrootā¦ 
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Re: happy late turkey day everyone.
It is a little weird but over here nobody eats turkey, also our thanksgiving is way earlier in the year and way not celebrated as much. We have two occasions though where people roast a goose (also famous for being quite dry, only learned to appreciate it when I taste the one my MiL makes, she roasts it for hours in a so-called Rƶmertopf before taking off the lid at the end to get crispy skin). Goose Holidays are Christmas and St. Martinās day. Goose will be served with red cabbage, and some kind of potato side or home-made egg noodles or dumplings aka Knƶdel. At my inlaws there is also a goose broth served before the main course. Iāve never attempted making one. People also get just the legs or breast if they cannot deal with a whole bird.
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The knowledge that turkey supplanted goose as a festive poult is the reason that I have never bothered to try goose.
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I find goose is pretty tastyā¦ it mostly suffers from people not really knowing how to roast whole birds (anymore?). My grandpa hated goose because of its somewhat gamy taste though. So thatās definitely a negative or positive depending on your personal tastes.
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Yeah I canāt stand goose - it just tastes weird.
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No goose, no beet-rootā¦ hmm? What are you eating in the cold season then? 
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Pretty much anything else - apart from Brussel Sprouts!!
We pretty much have the same thing every year - a huge turkey (Iāve never found it that dry - maybe just cos I LOVE gravy so tend to drown itā¦) with all the trimmings. We also cook a giant ham but thats more for picking at at teatime and sandwiches etc. My father in law uses left-overs to make a Boxing Day pie (basically turkey, ham, sausages, whatever else he fancies, some cranberry sauce, a bit of gravy to make it moist in hot water crust pastry). Day after Boxing day is turkey and sausage casserole (my wifeās favourite meal of the whole season. And then turkey curry if there is still left over curry. The carcass is then used to make stock and/or soup.
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I seem to recall that Griffster lives in Melbourne. If he gets a cold season he just waits half an hour.
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No South Coast of UK
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When I lived in East London my favourite takeaway curry place would put any of about six curry sauces on any of about six substrates, which were:
- beef
- pork
- chicken
- fish (half the price of any of the others)
- meat
- vegetable
āMeatā, I strongly suspect, was usually goat, and very delicious.
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You can try roasting a turkey breast side down. Thatās worked in the past for us. We tend to buy a rolled turkey (like a 3 or 5 bird roast), with light and dark meat. Thatās a much nicer eat - and easier to get in the oven when youāre feeding 12.
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I ordered some turkey breast steak this week, and twice as much was delivered as I expected. Last night I sautƩed carrots, onions, celery, mushrooms and garlic with some small chunks of smoked bacon, and when it was nearly ready, buried half the turkey under it in the pan over a low heat for a few minutes. That was fine.
For lunch today I fried the remainder of the turkey in butter with paprika, and served it with the remains of the vegetable and bacon mix, with buttered wholemeal bread. That was excellent.
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It does greatly help to have a fresh, not frozen and thawed, creature.
My technique is to use a relatively small bird (not to exceed about 16 pounds or 7 kilos), and cook it at 450F (505 K) for a relatively short period, until it reads about 150 f (66C) at the thick part of the breast. This particular instance was 14 pounds, and took a little under two hours to cook. Then you pull it out, cover it in a tent of aluminum foil, and let it rest for 20 or 30 minutes before cutting it.
Cooking it at low temperature provides lots of opportunity for the bird to dry out. Birds bigger than 16 pounds or so donāt work well as whole birds, the proportions of the various parts get out of whack. If you need that much turkey, you have to resort to butchering it and cooking the pieces separately, multiple birds, or cooking slowly and trying to make up for the moisture loss by brining or basting.
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