You can fuss over a turkey in a million different ways, but I dont. With all due respect to the delicious turkey recipes and clever turkey-cooking techniques we have featured on this site over the years, I make our family bird every year by doing as little as possible, and I always get compliments on how pretty it looks and how good it tastes.In this post, Im going to walk you through the process. Follow these instructions, and youll have a basic bird that comes out with juicy meat and crispy skin, while allowing you plenty of time to either relax or make extra side disheswhichever suits your personality. What you need to buyFirst, the turkey. Aim for 1.5 pounds of turkey (raw weight) for each person on your guest list. Remember, the turkey you buy includes bones and giblets, so thats not 1.5 pounds of meat. If youre expecting 12 people, a 12-pound turkey will just barely feed them, while a 24-pound turkey will give you lots of leftovers. An 18-pounder (12 people times 1.5 pounds) provides generous helpings and is arguably the ideal size. You may notice, when you go to the turkey store, that turkeys come in two sizes. The hens are small, often 10 or 12 pounds. And the toms are big, often 20 or more. So you may have to go with a smaller or larger turkey than would be ideal. Make up for a small turkey by asking people to bring plenty of side dishes; deal with a large one by sending everyone home with leftovers. Other things you will need to roast a basic turkey: A thermometer, ideally an instant-read digital thermometer like this one. This isnt going to break the bank, and you will get plenty of use out of it, so dont skip this item. You need it. ThermoPro TP19H Waterproof Digital Meat Thermometer $16.99 at Amazon $24.99 Save $8.00 Shop Now Shop Now $16.99 at Amazon $24.99 Save $8.00 Some kind of pan to roast it in. A deep roasting pan is traditional, but you can also use a wire rack in a rimmed baking sheet. Personally, I use a roasting pan minus the lid. Aluminum foil, to protect the birds skin if it starts browning too fast. Butter, to smear all over the turkey. Get two sticks of butter unless your bird is a very small one.Herbs and seasonings of your choice, to mix in with the butter. I like to throw some onions and celery into the bottom of the roasting pan as well. Optional: a ladle or turkey baster, not to baste the turkey (we wont), but to retrieve drippings for gravy. One week ahead of time: Make a plan to defrost your turkeyIf you bought your turkey frozen, youll need to start thawing it well in advance of the big day. Put your turkey in the refrigerator for one day for every 4-5 pounds. Expect a 12-pound turkey to take about three days to thaw; a 20-pound turkey, five days. On Thanksgiving morning, check on the turkey bright and early. If its still frozen, dont panic. You have two options:A cold-water thaw, changing out the water every 30 minutes. To do this, place the entire turkey, still in its plastic wrap, into your kitchen sink or another suitable large container (even a bathtub). Expect this to take 30 minutes per pound. Roast it anyway. Its fine to roast a frozen turkey, but it will take up to 50% longer. That means if you were expecting to roast your bird for four hours, and its fully frozen, expect it to take six. If its mostly thawed, it will take longer than four hours but less than six.Optional but recommended: Make a compound butter the day beforeSometime in the couple of days leading up to your big feast, make a compound butter. What to put in it is up to you, but youll be glad you made it. Heres how: Take your two sticks of butter out of the fridge to soften. When soft, use a spoon to smash in some chopped garlic, dried herbs, fresh herbs if you have any (chives are great), or even just a plain ol poultry seasoning blend from the grocery store. Want to get fancy? We have flavor ideas here. Put the lump of soft, flavorful butter into a baggie (you can kind of shape it into a log) and toss it in the fridge until Thanksgiving morning.Once the butter has softened, it takes all of five minutes to mash it together with the herbs, and youll look like some kind of gourmet chef when you tell people you rubbed the turkey with a handmade compound butter. Not sure which herbs to go with? Hum Simon and Garfunkel as you raid the spice rack: Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thymeIf somehow you forget this step, your turkey will be okay with just plain butter. (If I may tell you a secret: It will also be basically okay without the butter.) I like making the compound butter because it gives me something to do the night before, and I can put a child on this detail if they are looking for a way to help. How long does it take a turkey to cook?There are differences of opinion in what works best, so just know that if you are comparing times across turkey-cooking charts, make sure youre looking at the numbers for a whole turkey (not a breast or other parts) and that you want it unstuffed. We will not be stuffing todays turkey. You can make a pan of stuffing separately, if you like. Or, better yet, assign somebody else to make it in their oven and bring it over while its still hot. Here are the times recommended by the USDA for a turkey cooked without stuffing in a 325F oven: 8 to 12 pounds: 2:45 to 3 hours12 to 14 pounds: 3 to 3:4514 to 18 pounds: 3:45 to 4:1518 to 20 pounds: 4:15 to 4:3020 to 24 pounds: 4:30 to 5 hoursWork backwards from the cooking time to determine when to put the turkey in the oven. Heres the formula: Cooking time PLUS 30 minutes resting time = total time between when it goes into the oven and when you can serve dinner.Remember that it will take some time to get everything out of the fridge and prepped for the ovenId budget at least 30 minutes for that. So if you have a 20 pound bird and want to eat at 4 p.m., you will need about four and a half hours for cooking, plus half an hour on either end for prep and resting. Thats five and a half hours total, which means well want to be buttering our turkey at 10:30 a.m. and it should be in the oven by 11 at the latest. We might aim to get it in a smidge earlier to be safe, say 10:45 a.m. If you have to choose, its better to have the bird ready a little bit early (it can just rest a little longer) than to keep hungry guests waiting.How to prepare a turkey for the ovenOn Thanksgiving morning, before you start getting everything ready, take your turkey out of the fridge. Also take the compound butter out of the fridge to soften. The following steps will go a lot better if everything has had a chance to warm up for half an hour or so before you start. First, get yourself a nice clear space to work in. You do not need to rinse the turkey. You do want to avoid splattering raw turkey juices all over the place. This often means opening the turkey in a clean sink and transferring it to a roasting pan right next to the sink. Then you carefully throw out the wrappings and wash your hands. Your turkey will probably come packaged with a little plastic bag of giblets, and probably also a neck. If you dont find these inside the big cavity at the bottom of the turkey, go ahead and stick your hand in the top (youll have to lift up the neck skin, which tends to drape over the neck opening).Then we assemble our roasting pan:Optional: Place stalks of celery, carrots, and a quartered onion or two at the bottom of the pan.Not optional: Place the turkey in the pan, breast side up, legs not trussed or tied or bound together in any way. Let them fly free. The turkey will take so much longer to cook if the legs are bound. Note that sometimes the turkey will come with the legs tucked into a strap of skin near the tail, so if your turkey looks like its sitting criss-cross applesauce, make sure to free them.Optional: Place the giblets and neck in the pan, next to the turkey or in the body cavity. Theyll add flavor to the gravy. (Take the giblets out of the bag, of course.)Technically optional but highly recommended: Smear the softened butter all over the turkey, ideally the compound butter you made last night. If you dont have that handy, regular butter will do. If you forgot to soften it, it's OK to melt it in th e microwave and brush it on. And if you dont even have any butter, at the very least sprinkle some salt and pepper or poultry seasoning all over. I like to smear the butter over the breast skin and legs, and then Ill make a pocket under the breast and stuff any extra butter in there. Or you can just put the lump of extra butter in the cavity. (Do not save it for the table. It's got raw turkey germs on it now.)Finally, if you have a leave-in thermometer of any sort (such as a wired thermometer or a bluetooth thermometer), stick that in the breast, as deep as you can go without touching bone. This is for monitoring the bird as it cooks. When time is up, youll use your instant-read thermometer in several places to confirm the bird is done. And if that bird has a pop-up thermometer button? Take that sucker out and throw it in the garbage.What to do while the turkey is in the ovenThis is the easiest part. Once the bird is in the oven, you do nothing. After a few hours, take a peek to see how the skin is browning. If it gets crispy and dark before the bird is anywhere near done, tent it with foil (meaning you put a piece of foil loosely over the breast). To facilitate my doing of nothing, I like to use a bluetooth thermometer so I can monitor the temperature from the couch in the living room. People will say shouldnt you be watching the turkey? and Ill look at my phone and tell them its on track to be done by 4. Weber iGrill Mini $20.99 at Walmart $49.99 Save $29.00 Shop Now Shop Now $20.99 at Walmart $49.99 Save $29.00 What about basting?I do not baste it. Basting is overrated. I let the oven and the butter do their work. If the pan seems dry mid-cooking, Ill add half a cup of water just to make sure there will be enough liquid to collect drippings for gravy. But thats adding water to the pan, not drizzling it over the bird. You dont need to, I promise. And the skin comes out crispier if you don't.While the bird is cooking, I strongly recommend doing some organizational work. Make a checklist of every dish you plan to bring out to the table, and begin working on anything that can be done ahead of time. If somebody wanders into the kitchen and asks if they can help, give them a job. While youre at it, make a to-do list for those hectic 30 minutes after the turkey leaves the oven and before everybody sits down to eat. Maybe during that time youll be making a gravy, or warming up a side dish in the oven. Get everything ready so things can go smoothly when the time comes.How to know when a turkey is doneA turkey is done when you can insert an instant-read thermometer into the breast, the innermost part of the thigh, and the innermost part of the wing, and all of those locations read at least 165F. (The temperature will continue to rise as the bird rests, so its OK to take it out when its a few degrees shy of the target, but I dont want to overcomplicate this. If you want a simple rule, 165 is the number youre looking for.) Again: Ignore the pop-up thermometer. Pop-up thermometers are designed to pop at about 180 degrees, which means your breast meat may be very dry and firm. Some people like that texture; thats why the device was designed that way. (Many people do not.) Your choice of doneness is up to you, but for food safety reasons, you only need the meat to hit 165 degrees. Pop-up thermometers also arent consistent; occasionally youll get one that pops before the turkey is done. And youll want to check that the turkey is cooked everywhere, not just in one spot on the breast. Dont trust that button at all.Let the turkey restOnce the turkey is done, you take it out of the oven and let it rest before you attempt to carve it. The USDA recommends letting a bird rest for 15 to 20 minutes; many cooks prefer 30 minutes or more. Ive seen recommendations to let a bird rest for hours, which I cannot endorse. Id budget 30 minutes.Why not hours? Once the birds internal temperature drops to about 140Fwhich will normally happen during carvingthe bird should be eaten and leftovers put in the fridge within two hours. If you really want to push it, three or four hours is technically acceptable, but that four-hour mark is a hard stop, OK? People could get sick.During the turkeys resting time, you can make a gravy, either from scratch or by adding pan drippings to a store-bought or made-ahead gravy starter. We have a basic gravy recipe here: Its just roux (a mix of flour and butter) combined with a flavorful liquid such as stock or the watery (bottom) layer of your pan drippings. The only time I use a turkey baster is to suck up that bottom layer of drippings and squirt them into the pan of gravy. Otherwise, your job as the Roaster of the Turkey is done. Make sure to get a photo of your beautiful turkey, and assign someone else to carve it. Refer to your checklist to be sure that everybodys side dishes make it to the table, and youll look like some kind of hero who just pulled off the hardest job of the holiday.