**Scroll down for 12 of the best turkey recipes.**
We won't presume to tell you the single best way to cook your Thanksgiving turkey, as no undisputed King of Methods exists, and individual tastes and traditions reign, but we can show you some of the best turkey recipes and techniques around, along with some more manageable -- and often more tasty -- non-whole-bird options.
Turkey Recipes: 12 Ways To Cook Your Thanksgiving Bird
The turkey recipes listed above:
1. Alton Brown's Cider-Brined-and-Glazed Turkey
Alton Brown's much-loved turkey recipe uses an 8-16 hour brine (get started!), and starts off with very high heat.
2. Martha Stewart's Roast Turkey with Rosemary and Lemon
As featured in our Martha Stewart Thanksgiving recipes lineup slideshow.
3. Meathead's Smoked Turkey
Writes Meathead:
This is no ordinary turkey preparation, pilgrims. Follow these detailed steps and you will never have a dry, stringy, cardboardy, boring bird again. ...
I recommend smoking it, but if you must cook indoors, there are a number of tips and techniques we employ that will amp your bird to 11:
P.S. Those are sage leaves under the skin.
4. The Food Lab's Deep-Fried Turkey:
After poo-pooing the idea that deep-fried Thanksgiving turkey was anything more than a dangerous gimmick resulting in a dry, tasteless bird, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt of 'The Food Lab' at Serious Eats had a change of heart: "OK, Deep Fried Turkey Is Awesome!"
Want to truly leverage the potential of a deep-fried turkey? Buffalo Fried Turkey: get the recipe.
5. Torrisi's Revered Roasted Turkey Breast
Torrisi has really hit the New York restaurant world over the head this year, in no small part to its exquiste roasted turkey breasts, used in its lunchtime Josh Ozersky-dubbed 'Best Turkey Sandwich Ever.' They use a fairly specialized oven to cook their turkey breasts that nobody really has in their homes, but you can get pretty close with their recipe recently published by Sam Sifton in the Times.
6. Mark Bittman's Braised Turkey
Another approach rejecting whole-bird idealism.