• 1 1/2 pounds ground turkey (white meat, dark meat, or a mixture)
• 1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs
• 3 Tbsp mayonnaise
• 2 Tbsp chopped fresh chives
• 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 1/2 to 3 teaspoons of hot chile sauce such as Tabasco sauce (amount depends on how spicy you like your foods), or Tabasco Chipotle sauce
• 2 green onions, minced, white and green parts
• 4 fresh basil leaves, thinly sliced
• 1 teaspoon sea salt, or more to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper, or more to taste
• 4 hamburger buns, lightly toasted
• Sweet pickle slices
• 1 tomato, cored and sliced

Coleslaw

• 2 cups shredded cabbage
• 1 cup loosely packed arugula, watercress, or just another cup of shredded cabbage
• 10 basil leaves, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup of mayonnaise
• 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

2 Combine the turkey, bread crumbs, mayonnaise, chives, green onions, Worcestershire sauce, chili sauce, basil, salt and pepper in a large bowl and work the mixture with your hands to just mix. Do not over mix or the burgers will be tough. Form the mixture into 4 1-inch thick patties.

3 Season both sides of the patties with salt and pepper. Grill them for 5-7 minutes on each side, until the internal temperature of the patties reach 170F on a meat thermometer. Turkey burgers should be cooked through, not rare. Toward the end of the cooking, put the buns on the grill to toast for about a minute. Remove the burgers from the grill to a platter, cover and let rest for 5 minutes.

4 Assemble the coleslaw. Whisk the mayonnaise, vinegar, mustard, sugar, red pepper flakes together in a small bowl. Add to the cabbage, arugula, and basil in a larger bowl right before serving.

5 Assemble the burgers by placing each burger on a bottom bun, and stacking a tomato slice, some pickles, and a bit of coleslaw on top, and then topping with the top bun.

Makes 4 burgers.

* Need help figuring out how big a turkey to get? Butterball has a turkey calculator that helps you figure out just how many pounds you need. In general, plan for:

12-15 lb turkey for 10-12 people
15-18 lb turkey for 14-16 people
18-22 lb turkey for 20-22 people

Handle a raw turkey with the same amount of caution as when you handle raw chicken – use a separate cutting board and utensils to avoid contaminating other foods. Wash you hands with soap before touching anything else in the kitchen. Use paper towels to clean up.

Remove the neck and giblets (heart, gizzard, liver). Use the heart and gizzard for making stock for the stuffing. The neck can be cooked along side the turkey or saved for turkey soup.

Note that if your turkey comes with a plastic piece holding the legs together, check the instructions on the turkey’s package. Most likely you do not need to remove those plastic ties for cooking (unless you plan to cook your turkey at a very high temperature). If you remove the plastic ties, you will need to use kitchen string to tie the legs together.

2 Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

3 Wash out the turkey with water. Pull out any remaining feather stubs in the turkey skin. Pat the turkey dry with paper towels. Lather the inside of the cavity with the juice of half a lemon. Take a small handful of salt and rub all over the inside of the turkey.

4 In this method of cooking a turkey, we don’t make the stuffing in the turkey because doing so adds too much to the cooking time. For flavor, put in inside the turkey a half a yellow onion, peeled and quartered, a bunch of parsley, a couple of carrots, and some tops and bottoms of celery. You may need to cap the body cavity with some aluminum foil so that the stuffing doesn’t easily fall out. Close up the turkey cavity with either string (not nylon string!) or metal skewers. Make sure that the turkey’s legs are tied together, held close to the body, and tie a string around the turkey body to hold the wings in close.

The neck cavity can be stuffed with parsley and tied closed with thin skewers and string.

5 Rub either melted butter or olive oil all over the outside of the turkey. Sprinkle salt generously all over the outside of the turkey (or have had it soaking in salt-water brine before starting this process). Sprinkle pepper over the turkey.

6 Place turkey BREAST DOWN on the bottom of a rack over a sturdy roasting pan big enough to catch all the drippings. This is the main difference between the way mom makes turkey and everyone else. Cooking the turkey breast down means the skin over the breast will not get so brown. However, all of the juices from the cooking turkey will fall down into the breast while cooking. And the resulting bird will have the most succulent turkey breast imaginable.

Add several sprigs of fresh (if possible) thyme and rosemary to the outside of the turkey.

7 Chop up the turkey giblets (gizzard, heart). Put into a small saucepan, cover with water, add salt. Bring to simmer for an hour or so to help make stock for the stuffing (see stuffing recipe).

8 Put the turkey in the oven. Check the cooking directions on the turkey packaging. Gourmet turkeys often don’t take as long to cook. With the turkeys mom gets, she recommends cooking time of about 15 minutes for every pound. For the 15 lb turkey, start the cooking at 400 F for the first 1/2 hour. Then reduce the heat to 350 F for the next 2 hours. Then reduce the heat further to 225 F for the next hour to hour and a half.

If you want the breast to be browned as well, you can turn over the bird for the last 15-20 minutes of cooking, at an oven temp of 300F. (Oven must be at least 250F for browning to occur.) Note that if you do this, you will have a higher risk of overcooking the turkey breast. We never worry about browning the breast.

Start taking temperature readings with a meat thermometer, inserted deep into the thickest part of the turkey breast and thigh, a half hour before the turkey should be done. The dark meat in the thigh should be about 175F. The white meat in the breast should be 160F to 165F. If you don’t have a meat thermometer, spear the breast with a knife. The turkey juices should be clear, not pink.

9 Once you remove the turkey from the oven, let it rest for 15-20 minutes. Turn the turkey breast side up to carve it. (See Epicurious video on carving a turkey.)

Making Turkey Gravy

Scrape all the drippings off of the bottom of the roasting pan. Pour drippings into a smaller skillet. Ladle off excess fat with a gravy spoon and save for possible use later. In a separate small bowl take a quarter cup of corn starch and add just enough water to dissolve the corn starch. Beat cornstarch with a spoon to remove lumps. Slowly add the cornstarch mixture to the drippings, stirring constantly. You may not end up using all of the cornstarch mixture. Only add as much as you need to get the desired thickness. Allow time for the cornstarch to thicken the gravy. Add salt, pepper, sage, thyme, or other seasonings to taste. (See gravy recipe for step-by-step photos.)

Save Bones for Stock

When you are finished with your turkey, save the bones from the carcass to make a delicious turkey soup.

1 1/2 teaspoons mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
Several slices of cooked turkey breast
2 Tbsp prepared cranberry sauce or cranberry relish
1 handful of baby arugula leaves or watercress

2 Heat 2 Tbsp of olive oil in a skillet on medium high heat. Saut onion and garlic until soft. Add mushrooms and reserved zucchini insides, and saut another 2 minutes.

3 In a separate skillet heat a Tbsp of olive oil on medium high heat. Add the ground turkey. Lightly brown the turkey, stirring only occasionally. After the turkey browns on one side, stir it so that it has a chance to brown on other sides. Cook until the ground turkey is lightly browned, about 6 minutes. Stir in the onion and mushroom mixture from the other pan. Add the wine. Stir in tomato, basil and rosemary and cook 1 minute longer. Drain any excess fat. Remove mixture from heat and set it aside.

4 When mixture has cooled, add cheese, egg, salt and pepper. Fill zucchini shells with mixture. Fill a baking pan with 1/4 inch of water. Place filled zucchini halves in pan and bake at 375 degrees for 40 minutes, until golden brown. Remove zucchini from pan and serve while hot.

Serves 4.

2 Layer a slice of cheese and a couple slices of ham on to each cutlet. Starting with the narrowest end, roll up the cutlet tightly. Gently wrap 2 slices of bacon around each cutlet. Fold up the aluminum foil around the turkey roll and wrap it tightly.

3 Place in a baking dish and put in the 375F for 25 minutes. Remove from oven and gently open up the aluminum foil wrappings to expose the bacon. Increase the oven temp to 400F. Cook for an additional 10-15 minutes until the bacon is lightly browned.

Serve immediately. Serve alone or with rice, or pan-fried vegetables.

Serves 4.

2 Toast the walnuts by heating them in a frying pan on medium high heat for a few minutes, stirring until they are slightly browned (not burned) OR put them in the microwave on high until you can smell the aroma of them toasting, about a minute or two. Let them cool while you are toasting the bread, then roughly chop them.

3 Heat a large saut pan on medium heat. Melt 3 Tbsp butter in the pan, add the bread cubes, and stir to coat the bread pieces with the melted butter. Then let them toast; only turn them when they have become a little browned on a side. Note, if you aren’t working with somewhat dried-out day-old bread, lay the cubes of bread in a baking pan and put them in a hot oven for 10 minutes to dry them out first, before toasting them in butter on the stove top. The bread should be a little dry to begin with, or you’ll end up with mushy stuffing.

4 In a large Dutch oven, saut chopped onions and celery on medium high heat with the remaining 3 Tbsp butter until cooked through, about 5-10 minutes. Add the bread. Add cooked chopped walnuts. Add chopped green apple, currants, raisins, olives, parsley. Add one cup of the stock from cooking the turkey giblets or chicken stock (enough to keep the stuffing moist while you are cooking it). Add sage, poultry seasoning, salt & pepper.

5 Cover. Turn heat to low. Cook for an hour or until the apples are cooked through. Check every ten minutes or so and add water or stock as needed while cooking to keep the stuffing moist and keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Serves 8-10.