I heard an interview with a chef who said that roasting a whole turkey is a poor way to cook since it will be overcooked and dry in some parts. He also said that if one insists on roasting a whole turkey, the stuffing should be prepared separately, then placed in the turkey since the stuffing often doesn't reach safe temperatures to kill off any pathogens that inevitably get absorbed if it's placed in a cold turkey.
He said that it's much better technique to cut up a turkey first, then roast the individual parts. But with a whole turkey, it's going to get dried up on the outside in order to get it to safe temperature on the inside because there's often bacteria like salmonella. A chicken or a duck is pretty small, but a turkey is just too massive to get the whole thing cooked properly. I know some try basting it to keep the skin from drying, but even the best whole roasted turkey I had was ridiculously hard on the outside.
Here are some interesting articles on the food safety and pitfalls of roasting a whole turkey. There was a pretty crazy article on Vice that described the problem, but I won't link it here because the language used is a little bit salty.
https://www.epicurious.com/expert-a...-turkey-stuffing-dressing-safety-tips-article
But here's the part of the Vice article that's reasonably family friendly. Not 100%, but still reasonable enough to post here.
But why is turkey normally so bad? And what can be done to make sure that your turkey isn't as bad this year as it was the years before?
The truth is, not much. If you're reading this and don't have your turkey already soaking in some type of brine (more on that in a bit), you've most likely lost the battle of the bird this year anyway. This isn't because you're not a fabulous cook. You very well may be. It's because it's almost impossible to roast a whole turkey (or 20-pound-plus anything) without overcooking it to the point of its being inedible. They're just too damn big. And as a big-*** whole turkey cooks, the moisture inside it escapes. Since you have no choice but to cook it through, everything that helps make the turkey consumable disappears like so many promises the white man made the Native Americans, and what you're left with is a pile of protein-packed cardboard.
Here's a pretty good description of cooking a turkey in parts.
Breaking the bird down into its primal cuts allows the meat to cook more evenly, and in half the time. It also frees up more space in the oven—enough to cook as many as three turkeys at once—while you simultaneously simmer the carcass into a quick stock for gravy.