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To make the best Thanksgiving Day dinner actually takes less work then you may think. In this article, I will explain how to make a moist, buttery turkey using a less expensive turkey to begin with.

Personally, I like to buy the grocery store brand food, when I can. It saves me money, which is great for a limited budget. I know butterball turkey's all are excellent, but I cannot always afford one. Some of the store brand foods can taste as good if not better, then none name brand products. Thanksgiving Day dinner should not wreck your food budget for the month.

When you go into your local grocery store, bypass the butterball turkeys and grab of the store brand along with some margarine. When you are starting to prepare this turkey, remove the neck, giblets, and other assorted things from the cavity. There should be a white paper package, in the turkey open that packets and dump the contents into a pan of water. Go ahead and start cooking these assorted parts, as they will be the broth, which we baste our turkey.

To make this turkey, very moist and buttery we are going to put margarine in there. This is easier than it sounds, start at the back end of the turkey slide your fingers and between the skin and the turkey itself.

You need to use your fingers to separate the skin from the meat all the way up to the other end of the turkey. All you are doing is putting your hand in there so that the skin stays intact, just separated from the turkey. You have created sort of a pocket between the turkey and the skin, and you will fill this pocket with the margarine.

If the turkey has one of those pop up timers, you need to avoid touching that, as you will cause it to malfunction. A malfunctioning pop up timer is not going to hurt your turkey, or affect the flavor, unless you leave it in there too long. The best advice there is just a workaround that pop up timer and leave it alone.

If you're using a tub all of margarine, you need to remove some and put it in a smaller bowl as you will be using your fingers to scoop the margarine and put it in the turkey. With your hand full of margarine, you will proceed to put this into the pocket that you have created.

With a 20-pound turkey, you will need by about half a cup of margarine. When you have the margarine in the turkey, run your hands over this skin, and slide that butter around just so it is even on the turkey. This will ensure that the margarine not only flavors the turkey evenly, but also adds the moisture that is required.

Bake your turkey, as directed on the packages directions, basting it with the broth you have cooking on the stove-top often. About an hour it before the turkey is done, this is the point that you can insert stuffing into the turkey. By cooking your stuffing in the turkey, the flavorful drippings from the rib portion of the turkey will drip down into your stuffing and will help flavor it. You do not want to stuff the turkey with the stuffing before this time as your turkey will not cooked properly and your stuffing will dry out.

I learned how to bake this type of turkey, from a friend I met when my ex-husband was stationed in South Korea. Every year since that time, when someone has commented on how moist my turkey is, I tell them the story of how Tina, taught me how to make this moist, buttery turkey. It is the knowledge that Tina share that day that has become a Thanksgiving Day tradition within my family and our turkeys.

Learn more about this author, Amy Jo Browne.
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