Photo © The Kansan.com.

The complete guide to cooking a Thanksgiving turkey, with a few extras thrown in.

By Bruce Cole - Published 11.16.04

To get in the mood, practice your turkey call: Gobble Gooble.

Fine Cooking Magazine's guide to buying a turkey.

You get what you pay for by the way. Sure heritage turkeys are expensive, but they are so full of flavor that you don't need to brine them. The cult of brining has taken over Thanksgiving preparations, it's practically mandatory that you soak your bird or risk disappointing your dinner guests. We interviewed Harold McGee a while ago and asked him what he thought of the brining. He had this to say, "The way I look at it is what you are doing is making meat that should be better in the first place, tolerable, by adding juices to it. If you imagine your butcher doing that, selling you a piece of meat that's 20% added water, you wouldn't appreciate it, but yet that's basically what you are doing..." Hmmm. We ordered a heritage bird this year so we won't be doing the turkey dunk (but if you insist, here's the now famous Chez Panisse Brine). McGee actually packs his turkey with ice packs, to chill the breast meat, and keep it from over cooking (see photos in this NY Times article).

For the brining novice, Step By Step instructions - with photos.

Oh yeah - don't rinse the turkey (if you aren't going to brine it)!

Got a frozen bird? The USDA's guide to safely thawing it out.

Thanksgiving dinner circa 1892 at Brackenridge Hall, UT.

Some like it BLACK!

Deep Fried Turkey.

Now that you've cooked it, don't blow the gravy! Robert Wolke with some tips to making yours smooth and silky.

Let's face it. If you're gonna do mashed potatoes, you may as well take a lesson from the master, Chef Joel Robuchon.

"It's fitting that our national dish is cheap and monstrous, divided between meat of color and meat of pallor, with a useless left wing and right wing, between which the middle dries up. Is it any accident that the worst symbolic act Americans can inflict on each other is called "giving the bird"? More from Rob Morse.

More questions? Cook's Illustrated's turkey help list.

Last but not least, Linda Stradley of What's Cooking America, and her guide to the proper handling of those all important leftovers.