With all that it has to offer: its signature warm smell while it roasts, terrific comforting flavor fresh out of the oven, incredible leftover versatility, and much more, especially when it’s cold out, why have roasted turkey just on Thanksgiving?

I’ve roasted two turkeys since Thanksgiving: one to have leftovers at home after Thanksgiving, which I’m still enjoying in portions out of the freezer, and another to prepare for a Bicycles Battling Cancer dinner at the American Cancer Society’s Hope Lodge in Boston last week.

If you’ve never roasted a turkey, you might think it’s a real chore.

It isn’t. In fact, it’s stress-free easy.

The keys to roasting a turkey beautifully successfully are roasting the turkey without stuffing (which otherwise will lead you to overcook the bird to cook the stuffing safely), using a meat thermometer, and doing most of the roasting with the turkey’s most delicate meat, the breast meat, cooked out of direct contact with the heat, which means roasting the bird mostly breast side down as shown in the top left picture below.

Click either this link or any picture on this page for complete, easy to follow fully flavorful stress-free roast turkey directions.