Prepare a Beautiful Thanksgiving Turkey

If you can even believe it, this was my first year ever roasting a turkey. I know, crazy, right? And even crazier was that I wanted to roast a turkey and prepare an entire Thanksgiving dinner by myself, in my little kitchen without a garbage disposal or dishwasher, for my all friends the week before Thanksgiving.

Us food bloggers are a crazy crew, I'll tell you what!

When I was in culinary school, we learned all about the merits of a proper brine and so after much research and debate, I decided to go with a brown sugar cayenne brine on my first ever Thanksgiving bird.

A brine is really just a salt water bath you give your turkey to make it supremely tender, moist and delicious. I added the brown sugar and cayenne pepper because it seemed like the right thing to do. What isn't made better by those two things?

So, after an extra long (cold!) bath and a quick little truss, my turkey was ready to go.

It turned out delicious and got rave reviews from all my friends. A delicious crispy golden skin and moist, juicy meat; the only other thing this turkey needed to be complete was a boat full of gravy and homemade cranberry sauce!