Popeye's made my Thansgiving Day Turkey!

I was eighteen years old when I took over Thanksgiving turkey duties from my mother.  Now my mom was phenomenal cook, but her turkey, like so many others turkeys, tended to be a little bit on the dry side.  At the time I was bussing tables at this little restaurant off of Euclid in St. Louis where the chef, Surly Sue, a woman who taught me as much about the art cooking, if not more, than even my mother, showed me how to roast a never-dry turkey.  Basically this consists of splitting the turkey down the middle at the breast, lots of butter and 30 minute basting intervals, and true enough, the turkey hasn't had a dry slice ever since.  30+ years on  I've gone from roasting to smoking to my current technique of sticking the bird in the Rotisserie oven, and still... never a dry slice.

But now I'm getting up there a bit, tire more easily than I used to, still got dressing, mac n' cheese, this unique potato dish, among other things to prepare, so while making a trip to Popeye's to pick up a Chicken Sandwich,  there I saw an in store poster advertising their fully cooked Cajun style turkey.  Why the heck not?  I order it and head to Popeye's on Thanksgiving eve to pick it up.  There were some issues that day, such as this particular Popeye's electronic payment system being down, and I will admit this inconvenience gave me the strange urge to jump over the counter and stick somebody or maybe just body slam a fool, but we pushed it down, those issues were resolved and 62 dollars later I was walking out with a frozen solid 14 pound Popeye's turkey.  Yes, the Turkey itself cost 39.95, but upon hearing I was leaving to pickup my turkey, the ladies at work put in an order for five chicken sandwiches.

First thing I gotta do is make sure this thing defrosts.  If I knew it was frozen I would've picked it up a couple of days earlier, so I put this thing in a roaster filled with cold water, because the directions on the package, in BOLD LETTERS say DO NOT allow it to defrost at room temperature for some reason, and hope this bird defrosts by 12 noon Thanksgiving day. 

No worries, next morning the turkey was completely defrosted, cut it open, stuck it in the roaster uncovered as instructed, set the temp to 300 and slid it in the oven for 2 1/2 hours. The sides are mostly done already to which my Instant Pots had an awfully large hand in taking care of most of this, and 2.5 hours later we pull out a beautiful looking bird.  I follow their recipe on the package for making the gravy, but I did add a can of cream of mushroom and a dry package of onion soup to this gravy because some things I just can't leave to random instructions on the side of packages.  Put it all on the table... time to eat.

So how was it?  Oh yeah, all involved agreed that it was very tasty.  I'd read some comments about it maybe being 'too spicy', but no, my definition of spicy is probably different than others, but it was mildly spicy at best and pretty much seasoned all the way through.  And... it was a touch dry.  The gravy was on point so the breast dryness wasn't really an issue, but it was a little dry.  But the best part of this bird is the goo that gathers in the bottom of the roaster after you cook it.  I guess it's fat?  But it doesn't congeal like fat and that stuff is magic.  You can dump this goo on anything and it makes it better.  After dinner, after everybody has gone back for the seconds and thirds, and walking by and picking at the bird, I always shave all the meat off the remainder of the turkey, including the back meat because that's some good stuff, and store it in a separate container since I don't have room in the fridge to put in an entire roaster.  This time however I shaved off all the meat and just let it sit in that goo and absorb it overnight.  Damn.  The most magical 2nd day turkey ever.

In the final analysis, all things considered, good turkey.  But not necessarily good value.  You see I was at Ingles supermarket a few days before the event and they had turkeys for 48 cents a pound and I got a 14 pound turkey for a little over six bucks.  No, I didn't need it, but I'm not gonna pass up on a six dollar turkey.  I got a freezer.  Plus the Popeye's turkey takes about as much time to cook as a raw turkey so it's not really saving us a heck of a lot of time either. 

So while this experiment was an interesting one and a relatively successful one, I could've just made the turkey as I always do, which is never ever dry, and saved 34 dollars which I could've spent on side dish ingredients.  Or lotto scratch-offs.  Probably lotto scratch-offs.