Until COVID closed America in 2020, I had cooked exactly one turkey in my life. My mom had broken her elbow and my brother (still living at home at the time) was having friends over for a turkey dinner. He’d gotten the turkey as a Christmas bonus from his employer. So I took a day off from work and with Mom hovering, I prepared the turkey.
Because of COVID my husband, children, and I opted not to attend the usual family gathering for Thanksgiving in 2020, which meant I needed to cook a turkey. Now I’m a decent cook, and I actually enjoy cooking on my terms. My daughter and her new husband had to work Thanksgiving Day, but I made arrangements for them to stop by the house and pick up dinner from our back entry hall. Most of the meal prep was easy enough. My son made the mashed potatoes, I’m a fan of Stove-Top Stuffing, and there is a local delicacy known as Plainville Turkey Farm gravy that one can purchase in the freezer aisle of the local supermarkets. Canned cranberry sauce. I also roasted new potatoes and green beans. That essentially left the turkey.
My friend Kris used to mention cooking turkey in crockpot, and that sounded fine to me. It wasn’t as if I needed to feed an army of relatives. There were many text messages (mostly me panicking) that morning, but the results were so good, my daughter said: “If you can cook like this, why do we eat at Grandma’s?”
The next year, X-Chromo and her husband hosted our family Thanksgiving, and I was drafted to cook the turkey. My daughter, one of her friends, and I had a great time fixing dinner that day. The rest of the family decided that here on out, I am the person in charge of the turkey.
KRIS’S SLOW COOKER TURKEY
Ingredients:
- 5-7 pounds of turkey, bone in, (about 2 split breasts, 2 legs, 2 thighs)
- 2 envelopes Lipton Onion Soup mix
- White wine–use a really good quality. It makes a difference.
Directions:
- Remove the skins from the breasts. Try to do this without your mother hovering at your elbow.
- Place in slow cooker (I use slow-cooker liner bags).
- Pour on as much white wine as you think it needs. I open a 1.5L bottle, use at least half, then sip while the others slave over the other dishes. Hey! I do the turkey.
- Sprinkle evenly with soup mix
- Cover and cook on HIGH for 3-4 hours *or* LOW for 5-6 hours. (Internal temp should be 165°F) (My mother never used a meat thermometer, which explains so very much. I adore mine.)
- Remove from slow cooker. Slice. I also ladle some of the resulting liquid over the sliced meat to make it moister. It’s already moist from the cooking process, but the wine/soup sauce adds more.
That’s it.
Maybe this year will the the year I save all the juice and make soup.
Enjoy!
