Plan ahead: if you can’t get a fresh turkey, it will take 2-3 days of thawing a frozen bird in your refrigerator.  Baking a small turkey (9-10 pounds) takes about 15-20 minutes to prep, 1.5 – 2 hours to bake, and 15 minutes to cool, ‘unstuff’ and slice.

• 1 fresh turkey
• 1 oven roasting bag
• 1 roasting pan (disposable is fine, but you’ll need a stronger pan to support it.
• 1 meat temperature guage
• Vegetables and seasonings to taste, such as:
  • 1 yellow onion, quartered
  • 1-2 cups celery stalks, cut to 2-3 inches long
  • 2-4 cloves garlic, peeled
  • 1 Tablespoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon pepper
  • 1 teaspoon thyme
  • 1 teaspoon sage
  • 1 branch of rosemary (I grow a lot in my yard)

Open the turkey package in a clean sink because a small amount of bloody juices will run out. Save the tag that includes the weight of the turkey.

Remove the neck and giblets.  Unhook drumstick tips in order to access the chest cavity. Reach inside the cavity and pull out the J-shaped neck. Then open the cavity at the other end of the bird and pull out the sealed package of liver, heart, and gizzard (the giblets).

Discard or set aside the neck and giblets. Some chefs boil the giblets and chop them up for gravy. I’m not big on giblets so I boil them with the neck, save the stock, and discard the cooked parts.

Open your oven roasting bag and place the turkey inside. Scatter your preferred seasonings over the bird. Stuff the vegetables inside the cavities.

Seal the bag and cut slits in the top to prevent bursting while it bakes.

Place the bagged turkey in a roasting pan. If you are using a disposable pan, use a sturdy pan underneath it to help move the turkey in and out of the oven. After the turnkey has baked, you will have several cups of juice inside the bag and it’s tricky to manage the hot, heavy and sloshing contents.

Check the temperature and bake times found in the instructions of your roasting bag. Check the internal temperature of the meat (not the items in the cavity) using a meat thermometer.

Remove fully cooked turkey from oven and place on a heat-resistant working surface.  Carefully cut open the roasting bag and gently detach it from any places it stuck to the skin.

Using tongs, remove the baked rosemary branch and the cooked vegetables. Save the vegetables for later use.

Allow the turkey to cool a bit before carving.

If you are baking the turkey ahead of time, remove large sections of the bird and store them, uncarved, in 2 cups of juice inside an tightly sealed container to keep it moist inside the refrigerator.

To reheat, slice the meat, place in an oven-safe pan, ladle the juice over the slices, cover the pan with foil and heat for 30 minutes at 350° F.