Cooking Turkey the Gallagher Way

There's no need to stress about cooking turkey. It's all in your attitude (and a little help from Butterball never hurt anyone).

For most folks, the beginning of November means Halloween is over, the leaves are turning color, and it's time to get ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

In the Gallagher household, November is the start of what we fondly refer to as "Practice Turkey Season."

It all started four years ago when I decided to host Thanksgiving for the first time. The 30 or so relatives who came were not expecting much of me, knowing that I had never actually cooked a turkey before.

In fact, they later admitted to laying bets on the ride over as to whether I had conned a friend into making one for me or had the whole evening catered.

On top of this, I am married to a man who still, after 14 years of marriage, is convinced that I am somehow going to poison him by undercooking his meat. He insists that I take the temperature of every meat or poultry dish I cook, including beef that has been slow-cooked for 12 hours.

"Honey," I try to tell him. "If I was going to try to get rid of you, do you think I'd make you dinner first?"

But I digress. The point is, the pressure was on. Big time.

What my extended family didn't know four years ago was that I had, in fact, spent the three previous weeks practicing on every kind of turkey and cooking style imaginable.

Okay, that's not exactly true -- I didn't fry or smoke any turkeys. But I did brine them, roast them upside down, rub butter under their skins, and even poke them and inject them with oil.

I tried fresh turkeys and frozen ones. Organic and free-range. Conventional and kosher. And you know what? None of it made a heck of a lot of difference.

The fact is cooking a turkey is no easy task. The thigh meat takes longer to cook than the breast meat, which means the breast is almost always dried out by the time the thigh is done. Most of us just end up smothering it with gravy and calling it a day.

But every year, some wacko food expert insists on coming up with some clever technique that's going to make it all taste delicious.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you to just let it go. In the words of that famed Saturday Night Live figure, Stuart Smalley, "You're good enough, smart enough. And gosh darn it, if they don't like your turkey, they can darned well cook it themselves."

That being said, check out these basic tips for cooking turkey. They might help. And if not, can anyone say Dominos?