Intriqued by the "Roast a turkey in 70 minutes" article in the November Martha Stewart Living, the crew decided to incorporate some of the recipes from that issue into this year's RainyDayKitchen Thanksgiving event.

The dishes chosen from Martha's Thanksgiving menu included the wild rice with cranberry and pecan, sweet potato and sage-butter casserole, and roast spatchcocked turkey. The menu also had the traditional fixings such as green beans, sausage stuffing, and a mushroom pie for the turkey-free. 

Normally, we would try out a recipe before serving it at an event, but there was not enough time to do a test run, so we placed our faith in Martha and went "all in."  The rice and potato casserole recipes looked pretty fool-proof, but the claim of a 70-minute roast turkey had some of us a little worried. This was because none of us have never spatchcocked a turkey before. 

Our schedule had us putting the turkey in the oven by noon and guests sitting down to eat at 2PM. If the spatchcocking ended up being more difficult than we had anticipated or the 70-minute roasting thing didn't work, then we would all be having just sides and fixings for Thanksgiving.

Fortunately, Martha's spatchcocking instructions were flawless and the time estimate for roasting was spot on (with some adjustment for a 15 lb instead of a 12 lb turkey). The only snag we ran into while spatchcocking was not realizing we were trying to cut through a thick piece of plastic holding the backend of the turkey together. Once we worked that out, we were able to remove the backbone and flatten out the turkey.

True to our schedule, the turkey went into the oven at noon. By 1:11, the bird was golden brown. We did a temperature check and found it to be a little under 155º at the thick part of the breast, so we put it back in for another 10 minutes. The next temperature check showed it at 177º. Perfect!  BTW, we have to give the ThermoWorks folks a shout-out here. Their new splashproof Thermapen is awesome!

With just 80 minutes of cooking, it meant we didn't have to get the bird in the oven at 8AM. The short cooking time also meant the bird did not need any basting nor did we have to worry about it drying out. Of all of the turkeys we have ever cooked, this was by far the quickest, easiest, and juiciest of the bunch. If you are thinking of roasting a turkey this holiday season...check out the spatchcock method. You'll save a lot of hassles, get better results, and have more time to spend with your guests!  [Permalink] -Martha Stewart Thanksgiving