Roasted Turkey Breast

Roasting a turkey breast has always seemed really daunting to me. I mean, its roasting! Meat! In an oven! Most people seem to think of roasting as something they can't do. But its easier than you could possibly imagine. It gives you leftovers for a week! And its damn satisfying to see that bird (or part of) come out of the oven all browned and crispy, even if you did give up eating the brown crispy skin years ago (but if you're me, you steal a bite anyhow!). The grossest part is jamming all the yummy spices on the skin, but you can do it. If I can, you can.

Wanna roast? Lets go!

1 turkey breast, or split breast
thyme
sage
rosemary
garlic, to taste (I used 6 cloves), coarsely chopped
olive oil
6 carrots, chopped into coins
celery (hard to measure, I used CSA celery which is much smaller), chopped
1 onion, coarsely chopped
3/4-1 c water
fresh ground pepper
fresh ground sea salt

Wash turkey and pat dry.

Use your hands to loosen the skin all around the turkey. If the turkey has one of those fancy-schmancy pop-up indicators, remove it now, but don't lose it!

Holding the skin up, sprinkle some thyme, rosemary, sage, salt and pepper on the meat. Get your hand in there and mess it all around. C'mon! Don't be squeamish.

Push the garlic cloves under the skin as well. Spread them out evenly. We want that taste to penetrate all the juicy meat! YUM.

Pull the skin back in place. Depending on how much you loosened it, you may or may not need to keep it in place with toothpicks. I loosened mine a lot, apparently, because i just kinda draped it over the edge.

While you're at it, if you removed the fancy-schmancy pop-up timer, put it back now in the thickest part of the meat.

Spray the skin with olive oil and sprinkle on some more salt and pepper.

Place in a shallow roasting pan on a rack (or if you're ghetto like me, make some tinfoil balls and put it on top of them in the pan). The key here is to just have it raised.

Add the carrots, celery and onion to the pan with the water.

Cover the turkey with a tinfoil tent.

Cook according to package directions, basting every 15 mins or so. Remove the foil tent for the last 15-20 minutes to allow skin to brown. If you have the pop-up timer, it will tell you when its done, otherwise, watch the clock.

Remove from oven and let sit 10 minutes. Carve and serve.