I cooked a frozen turkey. No there isn’t a punchline coming. The photo is the end result of what was once a rock solid frozen 14 pound Butterball turkey I bought at Safeway.
The turkey was moist and tasted pretty good. The skin was crispy and browned and with the simple gravy it was a great meal with butternut squash risotto, yams, and apple cranberry chutney.
Here is how I did it.
I just put the frozen turkey in a 325 oven on a lower rack in a rimmed baking sheet like you would use for cookies. That way hot air can get around it to cook. Don’t use a roasting pan with high sides. Put a cup of water in the baking sheet. That’s pretty much it.
So simple.
About 2 hours in I pulled out the packet inside and put some bbq rub inside and outside. I was tempted to put some cut onions and things like that inside the turkey but I think you need to keep it open as much as possible to get the hot oven air inside the bird.
I made sure all of it got to 165 especially down near the bones but not on the bone. The breast will overshoot but that was ok. Have a reliable and calibrated thermometer to check the internal temperatures. Don’t use those silly pop up things.
Total cooking time was about 5 1/2 hours. If you use a convection oven maybe a little less but figure about 50 percent longer to cook than normal.
Let it rest for 20 to 30 minutes and it is ready to serve.
I give it an 8 out of 10. It was as good as many turkeys I have had but maybe not as good as the best. It was by far the easiest I have ever made. Yes I would do it again.
One thing that I am sure helped is that the Butterball turkey is prepped for cooking.
“Contains up to 8% of a solution of Water, Salt, Spices, and Natural Flavor.”
Some think this isn’t a good thing but in this case where you are cooking a frozen turkey it helps because you can’t do any of this before you put it in the oven.
I made simple gravy with the dripping using this Betty Crocker recipe.
Here is the guide I followed to do this at kitchn.com