Roasting a turkey is quite easy, or it should be; after all, it’s only a little bit bigger than a large chicken. However, it’s quite surprising how many people mess up when roasting a turkey. How many times have you sat down to your Thanksgiving feast or Christmas dinner or- if you live in England – your Easter day lunch, only to be disappointed with the turkey?

A roast turkey should be tender, moist, and delicious, but to achieve all this you must first do a little bit of preparation. Before I left my childhood home, I used to love my Christmas day dinner, my dad used to cook most of our family dinners; in fact, he still cooks most of the food and I still love his turkey dinners. Now that I have my own home, I strive to cook like my dad. He has many years of experience in roasting meat, and his roast turkey is far the best that I have ever tasted.

To roast a turkey like my dad does.

*Take the turkey out of the fridge, and leave it to come up to room temperature.

*First, make sure that the roasting tin is big enough for the turkey to sit in.

You will need the following.

*1 large onion.

*Pepper.

*Salt.

*Twenty rashers of streaky bacon.

*Olive oil.

*1 large fresh orange.

*1 large fresh lemon.

To prepare the turkey for roasting.

*If the turkey is held together with string, cut the string and discard.

*Lay the turkey in the roasting tin.

*Open up the cavity.

*Cut the onion into quarters and put into the cavity.

*Do the same with the lemon and the orange.

*Sprinkle salt over the turkey, along with the pepper.

*Take the streaky bacon rashers and fit over the turkey breast.

*Dip a cooking paintbrush into a cup filled with olive oil, and coat the turkey all over with the olive oil.

*Do the same with the legs and the thighs.

All that remains to be done is to make a tent out of tinfoil.

To make the tent out of tinfoil.

All you do is, take a large roll of tinfoil, and cover the roasting tin with the tinfoil, making sure that you do not touch the turkey. This is to make sure that that when the turkey is roasting the steam from the juices does not escape, in doing this the turkey remains moist and succulent.

The onion, along with the lemon and orange, infuses into the turkey meat, giving the turkey a lovely fragrant flavour.

To roast the turkey.

*Preheat the oven to 200.

*Put the turkey into the oven and roast for thirty minuets.

*Turn down the oven to 160.

Now roast the turkey for at least three hours, depending on the size of the turkey a small turkey will not need as much cooking time as a larger one refer to the weight of the turkey and make your own cooking adjustments’.

Half an hour before the roasting time is done, take off the tinfoil along with the streaky bacon and roast for a further thirty minuets, this will give the turkey a golden finish that will grace any special dinner table. It will also taste great too.

To find out if the turkey is cooked, take a sharp knife and with the point prick the turkey thigh. If the juice of the turkey runs red, then pop back in the oven and roast for a further thirty minutes; if it runs clear, then the turkey is done.