Roasted Butterball Turkey
This recipe offers super simple instructions for how to cook a Butterball Turkey using the roasting method, so you can have a perfectly cooked turkey on Thanksgiving or any holiday. Please be sure to read body of this post for turkey thawing times, cooking times, equipment recommendations, and more!
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Ingredients
- 1 Butterball Turkey, 4 ½-30 lbs, fresh or fully thawed and unstuffed (see cooking times chart in the body of this post to determine how long you'll need to cook turkey for dependent on weight)
- Olive oil, other cooking oil, or butter
- Salt and pepper
- Optional: fresh or dried thyme, rosemary, sage, parsley; spices (I like paprika) minced garlic, lemon juice
Instructions
- Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees. Remove the giblets and turkey neck and pat turkey dry with paper towels.
- Place turkey breast-side-up on a flat rack in a shallow roasting pan 2 to 2½ inches deep.
- Turn the wings back to hold the neck skin in place, so your turkey will be stabilized in the pan and for carving. Brush the surface of turkey and inside the cavity with olive oil, other cooking oil, or butter and rub turkey with salt and pepper. If you want, you can also rub turkey with fresh or dried herbs, spices minced garlic, and lemon juice. You can do this the day before or right before roasting.
- Optional: Insert an oven-safe meat thermometer deep into the lower part of the thigh without touching the bone. The thigh is the thickest part of the turkey, so that’s where you need to make sure the turkey is up to temperature and safe to eat. If you don't use an oven-safe thermometer, you'll have to take the turkey out of the oven to do temperature tests.
- Place turkey in oven and roast until the thigh is 180 degrees and the breast is at 170 degrees (see notes section for stuffed turkey temperature). When turkey is about ⅔ of the way done, loosely cover the breast with foil so it doesn’t overcook (the breast will be done first, but the rest of the turkey needs more time). Please see the Butterball Turkey cooking times chart in the body of this post to determine how long it should take your turkey to cook.
- Remove turkey to a platter and let stand for about 20 minutes before carving and serving.
Video
Notes
- If you are cooking a stuffed turkey, please be sure to make sure stuffing registers at 165 degrees before removing from oven.
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