How A Hair Dryer Could Help Elevate Your Thanksgiving Turkey

Thanksgiving... it's the one day a year when you can eat and drink all day without anyone feeling guilty for going up for seconds (or thirds or fourths... let's be realistic here). Filled with family, friends, gratitude, and incredible food, the holiday has become an important part of many Americans' annual celebrations.

Of course, what would Thanksgiving be without the traditional serving of turkey? With an average of 46 million turkeys consumed each Thanksgiving, it truly has become the staple centerpiece of the dining room table (via CNBC). All that turkey does need to be properly cooked through. While baking a turkey came in first place for the "best way" to cook up the bird on Thanksgiving, there are still a number of ways to spice up the traditional dinner, including frying and smoking it. No matter how you cook your turkey during the holidays, drying the turkey has always been one of the most important steps to achieve crispy skin and perfectly moist meat.

Have you ever woken up early on Thanksgiving morning and the turkey you've been thawing is excessively moist? While this is typical, it just serves up mass amounts of stress when trying to get the thing into your oven to cook all day. You might impulsively go for the roll of paper towels to absorb excess moisture but how effective is that really? If you're up for a new hack to try this Thanksgiving, consider using a hairdryer to achieve your turkey-drying dreams.

We know what you're thinking — this sounds a little crazy. But hey, everything was once considered out-of-the-box until it became normalized and accepted. According to Reader's Digest, if you want perfectly crisped turkey skin, you should consider using a hairdryer instead of wasting half a roll of paper towels. While paper towels are only able to soak up the moisture on the outside surface of the turkey, blowing hot air from a hairdryer onto the turkey's skin can get inside and remove a deeper layer of moisture.

Using a hairdryer on your Thanksgiving turkey is actually pretty easy (via YouTube). First, start with your thawed turkey and remove any excess from its cavity, like organs. You can still pat down the turkey with paper towels to get most of the outer-surface moisture off of the skin and then break out the hairdryer. Using the maximum heat setting, you can "blow dry" the turkey for anywhere between 10 to 15 minutes or whenever there is no moisture or dampness left (via The Hot Mess Press). With this method, you can achieve your best browned and crispy turkey skin, with the browning starting as soon as 20 minutes once in the oven.

Try it out and let us know the results it produced for you!