As a Jew married to a Catholic, I don’t exactly have competing demands on my time at Christmas. My mother-in-law hosts Christmas Eve “dinner” of assorted finger foods, plus gets sliced roast beef from the supermarket, and roasts bland-ass turkey, for theoretical sandwiches that nobody* eats.
* My brother-in-law typically has a sandwich because he’s an eating machine. Everyone else is too full of bbq meatballs and cocktail weiners.
But, this past Christmas, my mother-in-law asked told me to make turkey for the sandwiches that nobody eats, so I decided to come up with a recipe that people would actually, you know, eat. Since there’s always way too much turkey, I got only a turkey breast, dry brined it (basically putting a bunch of salt on it overnight) and made a compound butter of garlic, rosemary, sage & thyme which I melted and brushed all over the turkey before roasting it at a high temperature to really crisp the hell out of the skin.
I use my handy dandy meat thermometer where you stick a probe in the meat and monitor the temperature rather than set a timer, to cook it until it reaches precisely 165°F internal temperature then let it rest for a good 15 minutes before carving.
I figured this would taste pretty good but even I was unprepared for just how damn good that turkey was. So on my most recent grocery trip when I strolled through the poultry section and noticed the same fresh turkey breast from a suitably hippie-friendly supplier, I bought one to make the same thing again.
My Sunday dinner was the aforementioned turkey, roasted sweet potato wedges, and some mixed fresh veggies.
Damn son.