Bacon Wrapped Turkey

In my world, bacon reigns supreme. Bacon simply makes everything better. It doesn't just enhance the flavor of absolutely everything but, when used in the correct manner, can make any meat you are cooking super tender and juicy. It only takes a few extra minutes to make a cozy little blanket to encase whatever it is you are cooking. I especially love it with turkey. No need to baste and the pop up timer included in turkeys won't be compromised.

This is all super easy and your dinner guests will be impressed with how tender and juicy your turkey is. Begin by laying out aluminum foil on your counter, making it big enough to cover your turkey. Lay your bacon pieces vertically, touching but not overlapping, until it is as wide as needed to cover your turkey. Raise every other strip of bacon and lay strips across horizontally. Lower the raised vertical strips and raise the vertical strips you didn't use on the last row. Insert another horizontal row and continue to weave until it is long enough to fit the length of your turkey.

Once that is finished, mix the butter and spice mixture to season the turkey. I used about a cup of butter, at least. To that, I added fresh, finely chopped garlic, onion powder, cayenne pepper (just a dash), one package of onion soup mix, powder bullion (chicken flavor), and pepper. Use as much or as little of the butter and seasoning as you want. (If it makes you happy, it tickles me pink.) Mix until the spices are evenly distributed throughout the butter.

At this point, use your fingers to find a hole in the skin that will allow you to insert the butter mixture under the skin and next to the meat. (It's usually pretty easy to find between the breast and leg of the turkey.) Once you've either found a hole or made a small one with a sharp knife, split your butter in half and insert half under the skin of each breast.

Now. Back to the bacon. Use the aluminum foil to pick up the blanket of bacon you weaved and drop it over the turkey. Make sure to allow the timer to peek through the bacon weave. Tuck the edge of the bacon blanket under the turkey. All that's left is to bake the turkey at 350 Fahrenheit until the timer pops out.

No need to cover it, no need to baste it. When finished, it will fall off the bone and leave you with the juiciest and most flavorful turkey you've eaten.

A few handy tips:

Before you do anything with your turkey, please take three minutes to rinse your turkey thoroughly. Rinse in cold water only. You aren't trying to thaw the turkey, just rinse the surface.

Allowing your turkey to be completely submerged in cold salted water to thaw will increase the flavor and tenderness of the turkey.

Soak your bacon in cold water before you assemble your blanket weave. The bacon will hold its shape and you will not see as much shrinkage.

Use cold butter. You can premix the butter and seasoning and allow it to remain in the refrigerator until you need it.

If you need to increase the length of the bacon weave, simply overlap bacon pieces vertically. Just an inch or so overlap is all you need. The weave itself will hold it all together.

If you don't have enough bacon for a full blanket, once you've seasoned your turkey, simply lay bacon pieces on top of your turkey and hold in place with toothpicks.