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Hey everybody, it's Mariel.

I have gotten through several decades of my life without ever having to make a Thanksgiving turkey.

Yes, I have mootched off the toils of my family, repeatedly and shamelessly gobbling up turkey legs and mashed potatoes and a little corn too.

And I'm not planning to stop anytime soon, but I know there are those of you whose time is up,

who are now the ones in charge of cooking Thanksgiving dinner.

And look, I just got to say, there's a lot of lore out there about how dang hard it is to make a turkey.

Oh, I had to wake up at 2 a.m. or the thing lit on fire,

or it was time for dinner and I took it out of the oven, but it was still raw inside.

It's not exactly encouraging stuff. But Lon Lam says I'm overthinking this.

A turkey in the grand scheme of things, not actually that hard. There's just a couple little things you have to keep in mind.

It requires a little bit of planning ahead.

But overall, the process is pretty hands-off, which is really great.

Lon is a senior editor at Cooks Illustrated.

Until I started working at Cooks Illustrated, I'd probably cooked maybe five turkeys in my life.

And since then, I've done, I don't know, 500.

Yeah, 500.

So she is the right person to talk to.

And Lon says there are really only three steps to cooking a turkey.

Get the salt in there, cook the bird, and then cut and serve.

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