How to Roast a Thanksgiving Turkey

Back when David Burke was owner of a restaurant in the Jersey suburbs, one of his chefs put 12 whole turkeys in the oven at 6 a.m. and proceeded to overcook them before the Thanksgiving Day service. Burke, after wasting a half-hour yelling and screaming, sent people to nearby supermarkets to scrounge up more birds, and then cook and plate them as the restaurant filled up. "That was a 'drop back to the 20 and punt' moment," Burke recalls. "The turkeys came out great, because we didn't have a chance to overcook them."
You can overcook a turkey in a busy restaurant just as easily as you can at home. How many dried out turkey breasts have you sawed through at Thanksgivings past? To get the perfect roast, though, take the legs off the bird and cook longer than the breast, Burke says.
"The anatomy of the bird does not allow you to have a moist breast and have the legs cooked at the same time. It just doesn't work," says Burke, now head chef at Tavern62 in New York. "White meat cooks at 140, dark meat cooks at 165. In order to get the dark meat cooked, you have to overcook the white meat."
Simply keep the drumsticks in the oven for 35 extra minutes, and you've got yourself a perfectly cooked bird.
Here's Burke's recipe for Thanksgiving turkey, which he serves with cornbread and sausage stuffing.