TURKEY:
I use an 18 - 20 pound turkey. (Butterball is really good). Remove giblets (for use later in gravy) from inside turkey, wash turkey and pat dry. Use butter or margarine and rub all over turkey, then salt and pepper. You can put a whole onion and/or apple on the inside of the turkey and salt and pepper the inside too. Discard onion, apple or any other items used for flavoring from the inside after cooked. These will not be for eating.
Take a brown paper grocery bag. Pour Crisco oil on the inside and roll around to thoroughly saturate the sack. (Don't forget the fold at the bottom - no dry spots). Place turkey inside the completely oil sacked, fold the opening and use a stapler to secure the sack shut….all the way across the sack. Place in a roasting pan lined w/heavy tin foil. Place lid on top of turkey - as it cooks, it will shrink, allowing the lid to descend and fit on the pan. (If you use a disposable tin foil roasting pan, just double heavy duty tin foil.)
I have always put out turkey on late the night before Thanksgiving. Set oven at 325 degrees which works out to be about 20 - 30 minutes per pound cooked slowly.
Remove turkey, save all the broth. Slice turkey onto platter, cover tightly with foil drizzled with a little broth.
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DRESSING:
Make cornbread about 3 days before Thanksgiving. Crumble cornbread in bowl and leave uncovered (I put a paper napkin on top of the bowl) to allow it to dry out. Also, the day before Thanksgiving, I cut up and dice the onions, celery and boil the eggs I will need for the dressing and giblet gravy. I always buy about 4 cans of chicken broth to have on hand, just in case the turkey does not make enough broth for dressing and gravy. Thanksgiving morning - Pour the broth into the dried out crumbled cornbread, add the raw uncooked diced onions and celery, sage, salt and pepper. I put in about 3 raw eggs and about 6 cut up hard boiled eggs also. (The dressing consistency prior to cooking is slushy).
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GIBLET GRAVY:
Cut up boiled eggs, about 4 to 6, cut up boiled giblets very fine. Get the broth hot and to thicken: mix flour and water in a cup and pour through a strainer. Be sure and stir constantly while you are adding the water/flour mixture or you will end up w/lumpy dumpling-like gravy!!
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