Brown says cooking a turkey with stuffing is just a bad idea. "If you're going to cook stuffing inside a turkey, you're basically creating an edible envelope for the stuffing," he says. "It's now about the stuffing because you need to make sure that stuffing gets above the instant-kill temperature for salmonella." Getting the stuffing to reach this 165 degree mark usually means overcooking the meat, Brown says. He suggests cooking the stuffing separately and putting it in the turkey just after it comes out of the oven. The juices will still drip into the stuffing this way. Brown has a very secret method of pulling this off so none of his guests know the stuffing was cooked outside the bird. He cooks the turkey with an old can inside it with both ends cut out of it, making it easier to funnel the stuffing inside. And then as the turkey rests, he browns the back end of the stuffing with a blow torch. Do Not Baste. Basting the skin is not necessary to flavor the meat. You'll flavor the skin, but you'll also let heat out of the oven each time you open it to baste. "That means the bird is going to be in there for a longer time cooking, which means it's going to dry out more," Brown says. Another method for quick cooking is called spatchcocking, which involves cutting out the backbone of a bird with a big pair of shears. The bird is then flattened