Cooking for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or any other holiday? The truth is, your roast turkey recipe will probably be the easy part. It tends to be all those side dishes and fixin’s that eat up all your time!

To make a basic roast turkey recipe, all you have to do is season the bird well, place it in your roasting pan and roast in the oven for the required amount of time, basting the bird occasionally with butter, broth, wine, or a mix of all three. Viola! Done. Some basic roast turkey recipes will change up the seasonings a bit or play with the cooking time or temperature, but the holiday turkey really can be that simple.

Making Turkey Anytime

But you don’t always want to roast a whole turkey. Turkey is such a healthy meat that it’s wonderful to have any time of year– just not necessarily a whole bird. Fortunately, cooking just the breast is easy any time, and a lot faster than roasting a whole turkey. You can even turn turkey breast into a really good company meal without a lot of fuss… especially if you use to simple but wonderful recipe below, which is perfect for Christmas, Thanksgiving, or any time of year.

All you need to pull off this wonderful, original roast turkey recipe? A jar of apricot preserves and some dried, diced apricots. The rest practically makes itself. It even includes a simple and wonderful recipe for dressing up a plain boxed stuffing mix for a ready-made side dish. The pecan-apricot stuffing recipe that results is really, really wonderful.

Apricot Glazed Roast Turkey Breast Recipe

Ingredients:
1 4 to 5 pound turkey breast
1 jar of apricot preserves
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 box of Stove Top Stuffing
1 cup of chicken stock
1 cup of dried apricots diced
1/2 cup of chopped pecans
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Instructions: Preheat your oven at 425 degrees. Rinse and pat dry the turkey breast. Place in roasting pan and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes. In a small sauce pan, place the jar of apricot preserves, brown sugar and lemon juice. Heat mixture until preserves soften and mixture becomes liquid enough to spread over turkey breast.

Using a basting brush, baste turkey breast with apricot preserve mixture. Lower your oven heat to 325 and continue baking for 1 1/2 hours. Baste the turkey breast every 20 minutes.

As the turkey breast is roasting, make your Stove Top stuffing according to package directions, only use canned chicken broth in place of the water. Once stuffing is made, add pecans and apricots and mix well. Place dressing mixture in a greased casserole dish.

Place casserole dish in the same oven as the turkey breast and bake for the last 45 minutes at 325 degrees. Remove turkey breast when done and let stand for 10 minutes for easy slicing.

Making Turkey Gravy for your Turkey Breast

With this roast turkey recipe you will have plenty of turkey drippings left over in the pan. Don’t let them go to waste… make a batch of sweet and savory turkey gravy! Simply pour the drippings in a sauce pan and add 2 tablespoons of flour 2 tablespoons of butter or oil to the drippings. Stir until flour is golden. Add enough liquid to make gravy (about 2 cups of chicken or turkey stock).

Then all you’ve got to do is simply toss together some mashed potatoes and a vegetable or salad, and you’ve got simple, delicious, and impressive meal for company or a special Sunday meal for the family.