I've been cooking turkeys on my own since I was 19, at college on the opposite coast from my family, and emboldened with the task of making Thanksgiving dinner for a few exchange students and other classmates far from home. Since then, I've prepared some 15 holiday turkeys, with lots of experiments and none of the sitcom disasters. Here are eight great ways to roast a Thanksgiving Day turkey:

• Start with a clean, dry bird. Remove whatever giblets and random turkey parts are inside the bird, rinse with cold water in your sink, and pat dry with paper towels, inside and out.
  

•  Rub with butter, salt and sage. Sage is the classic poultry roasting herb, and is good fresh or dried (I like the powdered "rubbed sage" for easy application). Get your butter nice and soft, roll up your sleeves, and start rubbing. Salt and other herbs and spices can be sprinkled on or mixed with the butter.
• Roast the bird unstuffed. Your turkey will cook more evenly if you put the stuffing on the side in a casserole. I've stuffed many a bird, but the marginal flavor benefit the stuffing receives seems small in comparison to the safety and ease an unstuffed bird ensures.
  
• Roast alone in a large, heavy-bottomed pan. My turkey gets cooked on the pan (not on the rack) in a big hard anodized roasting pan I purchased on sale one year. It's great for creating those crackly bits and making gravy on the stove later.
  
• Leave plenty of room in your oven. It's hard to schedule oven time, I know, but your turkey turns out better if you don't pack your oven with casseroles, pies and roasting vegetables. Desserts can be made ahead, and the stuffing can go in for the last hour or two. Your green bean casserole can go in while the turkey's resting. And your friends could bring something from their own, currently empty, ovens. Right?
• The paper bag or tin foil tent. I've used this trick and it seems to work well (but the paper bag one is scary). The concept is to keep the bird from getting too dark and too dry. Most recipes call for the last 30 minutes of roasting time outside of the covering; I usually go for more like 1-2 hours for a properly crispy, crackly, dark brown skin.
• Increase the heat for the last hour. Many recipes call for increasing the heat from about 350 degrees to 400-450 degrees for the last 30-90 minutes. If you combine the aforementioned tent trick with increasing your heat, you'll get all the lovely cracklings you like.
• Baste with the roasting juices. I've usually covered my bird with so much butter - not to mention its own melting fat - that I never need additional basting liquid. Get a gravy spoon or basting syringe-thingy, and don't worry about preparing something special for basting purposes.