This came from the Chicago Trib years ago...It's a good one. Citrus baked turkey 1 whole turkey breast about 4 1/2 pounds Marinade: 2 oranges, grated rind and juice 1/2 cup corn oil 1/2 cup honey 1 red bell pepper seeded and diced 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and diced ( I like 2....maybe 3!) 1/2 tsp salt. Marinate in a plastic bag at least 2 hours or all day. Bake 375 in a covered roasting pan with the marinade poured over it. Bake an hour, remove lid and continue to cook until thermometer reads 165 ( about 1/2 an hour more). Remove from oven, let stand 20 minutes, skim fat from sauce, slice turkey and serve with the sauce. Linda C

Last night was my experiment. I fully preheated the oven to 500 deg. I prepared my chicken - rinse, dry, salt, pepper, into a #7 Griswold pan - and let it sit at room temp for a good half hour while the oven preheated. Put it in the oven on the second lowest rack. That's all there is to it, right? When the breast was a beautiful golden brown I checked the temp. The breast was already at 180. I poked at the thighs a bit and found areas as cool as 140. Clearly it needed more time in the oven despite the breast already being overcooked. After another fifteen minutes or so (I wasn't paying attention to the clock during any of this) the thighs were just barely approaching 165 so I pulled it out of the oven. Immediately after setting it on my counter I noticed that while the top of the drumsticks were nice and brown like the breast, the majority was a flabby pale beige. Same for the entire thighs and most of the wings. While carving the chicken I took a bite of the breast. Predictably it was dry, but my wife seemed to enjoy it nonetheless. I chose to eat the dark meat and sadly peeled off the skin. It was flavorful and extremely juicy if somewhat undercooked for my taste. In hindsight I know I made one mistake. I put the chicken in head first, whereas the instructions make a point of saying legs should face the back. Given this, I will give the method another shot even though being in the back didn't help the wings out any. On a positive note, I'm convinced of the small-pan tip. The oven didn't smoke at all, and the splatters on the wall were minimal. Who'da thunk, "place in pan and throw in oven" could yield such varied results.

Jennifer, my new roasting pan has a rack, and I'll use that so the skin on the back of the turkey gets crispy (for those that actually eat the skin). However, for years I've used an old enameled aluminum roaster with a lid that belonged to my Grandmother. She never put liquid in the bottom of the pan and neither did I. 30 years of turkeys got roasted in that pan, without any water at all, LOL, and they were all OK. Enough "juice" has always collected in the bottom of the roaster for gravy without added liquid. Annie

On the "What's New at Garden Web" feature at the top of the main CF page is an article on "10 Turkey Mistakes Not to Make" Understand that it is just one cook's opinion, but roasting the bird on its breast comes in at #2, followed closely by deep frying it. I'm not fond of trying to flip a hot 12 pounder, let alone a bigger one.