HOW TO OVEN ROAST A TURKEY IN ONE HOUR

Several of you commented, and a few even emailed us directly, and asked:  

"How did you cook a turkey in 1 hour?"  "Was that a typo?"

Nope, we really do cook our turkey in one hour...

We've posted this before but for those new to the blog, we're definitely happy to share it again.  It all starts with this thing here.  It's a "Beer Can Turkey Rack" (they are bigger than the regular beer can chicken holders).  We don't use beer (though I said we should try that sometime), we just use it as the method to hold the bird upright in the oven.  

We take a large sheet pan and cover it with heavy duty foil.  We take the giblets and neck out of the turkey and place it on the beer can rack.  Next, we rub olive oil all over and under and season it with some seasoning we call our farmhouse blend (really just whatever you like, salt, pepper, garlic powder, etc).  Heat the oven to 450 degrees.

Oh, I almost forgot, we do make sure the flap of skin is down over the neck opening so that it holds the moisture in.  This lets the heat go up under and into the turkey but not really escape out of the top.  As you can see, one hour later and it's nice and golden!  Friends have commented that it almost looks like a fried turkey.  

Here is a shot of the bird while it is cooking in the oven.  We take out all the racks except one and put that one on the lowest setting so that the baking sheet is on an oven rack, just at the lowest spot.  We've found that for our oven, a 14 lb bird is just about the biggest we can get.  

One hour roasted turkey

This wouldn't work (and we've tried) if you just put it in a pan, breast side up (or down) and did the same high temperature.  All you would end up with is overdone on the top and underdone on the bottom.  Plus you'd get a turkey that's two toned.

What happens with this method is that the super hot heat is able to reach all around the turkey at the same time so that it sears the skin and seals in the juices.  When we slice it, it's just as moist as can be.  In only one hour!  We start checking it about 40 minutes in.  We like the skin crispy and golden so we get that at about 1 hour, but you might like the results a bit sooner than that.  Just check the temp with a thermometer.  When we put it on a tray to carve it, it just looks beautiful, like a classic roasted turkey.

Hope that helps!