This is the final and most important phase of roasting. The whole house will be smelling like glorious juicy turkey, family members that you haven't seen since last year will be chewing your ear off, there'll be 15 other dishes being cooked at the same time, and so it's easy to get distracted. If you take the bird out too soon, you'll be serving undercooked turkey. Take it out too late, and everything will be dry and tough.



In order to hit it just right, get yourself a meat thermometer and check the temperature of the turkey every 15 minutes during the final phase of cooking.



The goal is to get the turkey to reach 165 degrees in the thickest section of the thigh. Plunge the meat thermometer into the thickest part of the thigh and take a temperature reading. Try not to have the tip of the thermometer touching the turkey bone, but just nestled deep inside the meet.



While you're getting the temperature of the turkey to hit its mark, you're also trying to brown and crisp the skin. With the foil removed, this will happen rather quickly. You've got only a few variables to manipulate. Basically, there's the foil covering, the temperature of the oven and the time you cook the turkey for. Thus, it becomes a balancing act between these three things in order to reach the final perfectly cooked turkey.



If the skin is browning too quickly, but the meat is still less than 165 degrees, cover the turkey in foil to slow the crisping process.



If the meat reaches 165 degrees before the skin crisps to your liking, remove the foil, crank the oven up to 400 degrees, and take the turkey out as soon as the skin crisps up, so as not to overcook the turkey.



If all has gone to plan, after 3 hours of cooking, the turkey should be fairly close to 165 degrees in the thigh already, and so that final 30 - 45 minutes of foil-less roasting should really just be to crisp the skin, baste the bird more often, and impart that final savory roasted flavor onto the flavor profile.