A few minutes before roasting, heat oven to 500 degrees.

Take the brined, rinsed, dried, and truffled turkey and place it in the roasting pan, on a solid layer of whole small onions and quartered carrots. (This will give you insanely delicious roasted vegetables as a side.)

Loosely pack stuffing into the cavity, and create a mound in front (you must have stuffing crispies!).

Tuck back wings and coat whole bird liberally with canola (or other neutral) oil.

Roast on lowest level of the oven at 500 degrees F. for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and cover breast with double layer of aluminum foil, insert probe thermometer into thickest part of the breast and return to oven, reducing temperature to 350 degrees F. Set thermometer alarm (if available) to 161 degrees. Let turkey rest, loosely covered for 15 minutes before carving.

*The bird WILL be stuffed!

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With a built-in timer and thermometer, the iRoast 2 uses hot air to roast beans evenly and quickly. It has programmable roast profiles that let you choose light, dark or in-between roasts from pre-set temperature options, simplifying the process of getting the perfect result by taking out the guess work. This is especially useful for someone new to home-roasting, as well as for anyone looking for consistency, which other home-roasting methods aren't able to provide without hours upon hours of experience.

The first things that will attract you to the books in the Williams-Sonoma collection are the mouthwatering photographs of the dishes. They've probably caught your eye in their stores. But beyond the eye candy, their books usually have good recipes and, in their Essentials series, a lot of useful information about the topic at hand. Williams-Sonoma Essentials Of Roasting is their definitive guide to roasting and probably a good reference to have on hand if you're thinking of starting up the tradition of the Sunday (or Monday, as tomorrow is Christmas) roast in your home.

The book begins, as do others in this series, by covering the basic techniques of oven roasting and the equipment that you'll probably need to be successful, like a good roasting pan. It has over 130 recipes for both traditional and updated dishes, including meats, vegetables, fish and fruits, as well as a variety of sides to complement them.

Many of us only use a large roasting pan a few times a year and even though the meals we are using it for are holiday dinners, where to is important to try to get the food as perfectly cooked as possible, it is hard to justify spending $200+ dollars on a pan that gets so little use. Cook's Country tested some inexpensive roasting pans, all under $100, to see if they would do just as good a job as the more expensive pans while staying in our budgets.

Each of the pans they tested was designed to work both on the stove-top, so they could be used to brown meats, and in the oven or under the broiler. They chose pans with a minimum size of 15" x 11" inches, to accommodate largest turkeys. Overall, they strongly preferred pans that had sturdy, upright handles, which were easy to grip and did not interfere with the way the pan fit into the oven by adding an extra 2-3 inches to the length. They also found that stainless steel pans with aluminum cores offered the best heat distribution, while plain stainless steel could be a bit spotty when it came to browning. Their top picks were:

• CALPHALON Contemporary Stainless Steel Roasting Pan ($100)
• CUISINART Chef's Classic Roasting Pan ($80)
• KITCHENAID Gourmet Distinctions Roasting Pan ($50) - Best Buy
• GRANITE WARE Oval Roasting Pan ($22) - Best Buy for very infrequent roasters

Talk Turkey to Me: A Good Time in the Kitchen Talking Turkey and All the Trimmings is one of those cookbooks that is so enjoyable to read that you almost forget it is a cookbook - and after reading well-written but intensely instructive texts, this comes as a welcome change. Author Renee Ferguson starts out by talking about selecting a turkey, choosing between fresh and frozen and the various sizes available. She covers defrosting and turkey anatomy (a crucial point, as anyone who has forgotten to remove the giblets from the bird before stuffing and cooking can tell you), too. From there, the book goes on to discuss stuffing, how to determine doneness and just about every cooking technique you can think of, from roasting to smoking to frying, along with all the important do's and don'ts for each. Once the turkey is done, you can move on to the chapters about sides, salads, desserts and tips for using up leftovers.

How does Renee know all this? She is one of the experts behind the Butterball Hotline, and not only does she share her turkey knowledge generously, but she also shares stories about funny callers and dinners gone wrong. After all, nothing will take the pressure off from a holiday meal better than a good laugh.

A turkey needs to reach an internal temperature of 165F in the thigh meat before it can be considered done. To achieve this, the bird must be cooked at a temperature greater than 165F for long enough to cook it through. The lower the temperature, the longer the time. A common temperature is about 325F, which results in a time of "about 20 minutes per pound." By increasing the temperature to 475F, roasting might take only 2 hours. Time, clearly, is a factor in choosing the latter method. Other advantages include getting a crisper skin and, according to many proponents of the faster method, a moister bird. In the end, it's a flavor and time preference as long as you check the meat with a thermometer to ensure that it really is done.

The name of the Sili Sling is derived from the fact that it is made of silicone, but it seems fitting for such a strange looking kitchen tool. The sling is designed to lift heavy foods out of a roasting pan, making it a perfect choice on Thanksgiving, as an 15-lb turkey can be difficult to maneuver, to say the least. No one wants to drop the turkey, but you can't leave it in the pan until it is cool and easy to handle, not unless you have no interest in making gravy, anyway. The oval sling is perforated and will not interfere with cooking, nor will it interfere with browning. The handles drape over the side of the pan and should be cool enough to handle after a few moments outside of the oven. Once Thanksgiving is over, you don't need to retire the sling for another year. It can be used for any other type of roasted or baked meat, from ham to fish, and has a maximum capacity of 18-pounds.