The Absolute Best Way To Fix A Turkey That's Too Dry, According To A Chef

Everyone has had the same Thanksgiving nightmare. In it, you've invited your whole family over, gallantly proclaiming that you'll handle hosting duties. You spend days brining the turkey and then roasting the biggest bird you can find, only to find that it's over-cooked. Or is it just me having this nightmare? I knew I shouldn't have confidently offered to host my entire family for the first time this year.

Regardless of whether you're a Thanksgiving pro or novice, everyone's experienced the disappointment of a dry turkey. Despite its large size, turkey is a pretty lean meat, which makes it very easy to overcook and/or dry out. We spoke to Bryan Ogen, the Executive Chef at Bourbon Steak New York to help put together a contingency plan if you're one of the unlucky hosts who is faced with surviving your guests a dried turkey. According to Chef Ogen, the fix is simple. "Slice the turkey, cover it in cold gravy, and bring [its temperature] back up over slow heat," he advised. "Serve it directly from the pan — this will braise the turkey slightly and make it moist again." 

Another way to make lemons out of lemonade is to add some root vegetables to your turkey braise. This way, your dish will look more intentional and you'll develop more nutritious and complex flavors to boot.

Even if you find that you've followed all the turkey cooking tips to a tee, chances are your Thanksgiving leftovers will need a little bit of a moisture infusion anyway. Chef Bryan Ogen's gravy hack is an excellent thing to keep in your back pocket for the post-Thanksgiving days. And if you're trying to go all out this year, we recommend you make your own turkey gravy ahead of time using scratch-made chicken stock. 

If you find that you're short on time and space, zhuzhing up some store-bought gravy is a great option too. You can go as far as saving your turkey drippings or browning up some butter to mix in more richness to the sauce or simply throw in a handful of your favorite festive herbs like rosemary, sage, and/or parsley as you heat it up. 

But at the end of the day, the best fool-proof tip we can offer, especially when taking on the huge responsibility of cooking a Thanksgiving meal, is to keep an emergency frozen pizza in your fridge. As long as the drinks are flowing and the atmosphere is convivial, no one will care if your Thanksgiving turkey is actually a pizza.