You're listening to life kit from NPR.
Hey, everybody, it's Marielle.
I have gotten through several decades of my life without ever having to make a Thanksgiving turkey.
Yes, I have mooched off the toils of my family repeatedly and shamelessly, gobbling up turkey legs and mashed potatoes and a little corn too.
And I'm not planning to stop anytime soon.
But I know there are those of you whose time is up who are now the ones in charge of cooking Thanksgiving dinner.
And look, I just gotta say, there's a lot of lore out there about how dang hard it is to make a turkey.
Oh, I had to wake up at 02:00 a.m.
or the thing lit on fire, or it was time for dinner, and I took it out of the oven, but it was still raw inside.
It's not exactly encouraging stuff, but Lon Lam says I'm overthinking this.
A turkey, in the grand scheme of things, not actually that hard.
There's just a couple little things you have to keep in mind.
Requires a little bit of planning ahead.
But overall, the process is pretty hands off, which is really great.
Lon is a senior editor at Cooks Illustrated.
Until I started working at Cooks Illustrated, I'd probably cooked maybe five turkeys in my life.
And since then, I've done, I don't know, 500.
Yeah, 500.
So she is the right person to talk to.
And lan says there are really only three steps to cooking a turkey.