Phyllis' Fables: A Thanksgiving Turkey To Remember

Bob and Terri – a newlywed couple – were hosting their first family Thanksgiving dinner. Terri, an aspiring attorney who had never prepared a turkey before, sat down at her computer early on Thanksgiving morning and Googled "turkey recipe". To her delight, up popped the following fail-safe instructions:

Turkey Cooking Times Rules Ensure the Best Thanksgiving Dinner for Guests

(Media-Newswire.com) - The proper turkey cooking times ensure the best tasting food this Thanksgiving day. By following some simple tips, anyone can cook their dinner with guests raving for more.

Cooking a turkey is not rocket science! Follow a few basic rules and plan out your dinner for the best results.

First, set the oven to 325 degrees and move the rack to a middle to lower position. Next, clean turkey of the inner guts through the front cavity opening. Dry the turkey well with paper towels.

Place the turkey in a shallow roasting pan usually with water on the bottom for basting later.

Pin the wings close to the turkey using cooking rope and wrap around the neck. Use an oven safe thermometer which has the stem into the thick part of the leg. This will ensure the proper cooking temperature needed to decide when it has been fully cooked. Make sure the thermometer does not touch the bone or you will get a misreading.

The inner temperature is the most important when cooking a turkey. Most cooks will use the 12 minutes per pound under 10 pounds. This rule is basically 2 hours for a 10-12 pound turkey. If the bird is larger than this, theory is to add 15 minutes per pound on top of this two hours.

Averages for an 18-20 pound turkey is 3-3.5 hours if it is unstuffed. With stuffing inside the cavity of the bird, expect to cook it from 4-4.5 hours in the oven. Temperatures usually are around a minimum of 325 degrees but you must check the label on the turkey as each are different.

Not being a rocket scientist, Terri was reassured by the statement that "Cooking a turkey is not rocket science!".

She pulled her 15-pound bird out of the refrigerator (she had transferred it from the freezer the night before), cleared out – with some effort and much splashing around – the still-frozen cavity, and blotted it dry with paper towel. Terri then stuffed the cavity, trussed the bird, placed a meat thermometer in the thigh, and left the turkey on the counter to continue thawing until it was time to pop the bird into the oven.

"Let's see," she calculated, "We're planning to serve dinner at 4 o'clock. That means I should start roasting my turkey at noon."

And that's what Terri did.

At 4 o'clock, Terri removed her turkey from the oven, transferred it to a platter and proudly placed it at the head of the table for Bob to carve. It looked delicious, and Bob did a masterful job of slicing the bird (he had been secretly practicing his carving technique). Everyone exclaimed over Terri's tender turkey.

The next day, Terri and Bob were exclaiming over something else. Both had spent a restless night of toilet trips. "Must have eaten too much," they both thought. But then, Bob had a call from his Dad, and Terri from her Mom. Everyone who had eaten Terri's turkey was sick. Stomach cramps, diarrhea, and nausea made the day after Thanksgiving a true Black Friday.

"It must be food poisoning from the turkey," Bob told Terri.

"But how could that be? I followed the directions exactly," Terri answered.

Sadly, the recipe that Terri had followed so carefully was incomplete.

• It gave no instructions on how to thaw a frozen turkey safely.
• It did not say that the cooking times applied to a completely thawed turkey.
• The recipe should have said that a bird must be placed in the preheated oven immediately after stuffing.
• The thermometer placement was wrong. In a stuffed turkey, the stuffing is the last place to heat up. That's where the thermometer should be placed.
• The recipe did not provide a target temperature – just a recommended cooking time.

These flaws were Terri's downfall. The bird and its stuffing were not cooked for long enough to allow the coldest area – the stuffed cavity – to reach a safe temperature. Salmonella survived.

The moral of Phyllis' Fable:– When preparing for Thanksgiving dinner, plan well ahead.

• Be sure that your turkey has been completely thawed.
• Never allow the raw bird to sit at room temperature.
• Buy a good meat thermometer and learn to use it correctly. The coldest part of the turkey must reach 165ºF.
• Consult a reliable source – such as the USDA web site – for a safe recommendation on cooking and handling procedures.

Finally, to ensure that you enjoy Thanksgiving leftovers safety, never let them sit out at room temperature after dinner. Refrigerate or freeze all of your leftovers as quickly as possible.

Wishing all of my US readers a Happy and Healthy Thanksgiving!

A Turkey P.S.

We decided to run a little experiment in our kitchen yesterday. We monitored our turkey's temperature with two probes - one in the thickest part of the breast meat and the other in the center of the stuffing (we stuff our bird with home-made bread stuffing). The temperature of the stuffing lagged the temperature of the meat by 10ºF. When the breast meat reached 160ºF (71ºC), the stuffing was only 150ºF (65ºC). We checked the probes against each other at that point by removing the stuffing probe and transferring the meat probe into the stuffing. They agreed within 1ºF, so we simply continued to monitor the stuffing temperature.

USDA recommends cooking poultry (chicken, turkey or whatever) until all parts of the bird and its stuffing reach 165ºF (74ºC). If you have only one temperature probe and you stuff your birds, the best place to monitor cooking temperature is in the center of the stuffing.

One last reminder. Refrigerate any leftovers promptly - don't wait for them to cool to room temperature first - and, preferably, in shallow containers so that they cool quickly to 40ºF or below.

Avoiding The Turkey Trots

Thanksgiving is looming and the US Department of Agriculture has published its usual warning about correctly cooking the holiday bird. USDA’s recommendation this year is to cook the turkey until the meat and the stuffing have both reached 165ºF (74ºC).

The best way to be sure that your turkey and stuffing have reached a safe temperature is to insert a meat thermometer in the thickest part of the meat (breast or thigh), and a second thermometer in the center of the stuffing. If this sounds like overkill, think about the Salmonella that might be lurking inside your bird.

Some turkeys come equipped with a plastic pop-up indicator, but these aren’t always reliable. When pop-up indicators were first introduced, a researcher in Canada tested their performance. While the temperature at which the indicators popped was consistent, their location in the breast meat often reached popping temperature before the entire bird -with or without stuffing - had finished cooking. And the bigger the bird, the higher the risk of an underdone turkey.

While most of the Thanksgiving angst is usually focussed on the turkey, the stuffing can also be a food safety risk. Stuffing a bird involves hand contact, and many people carry Staphylococcus aureus on their skin and in their nasal passages. Given enough time (4-5 hours) at the right temperature, some Staph aureus strains will produce enough toxin to cause a fine case of food poisoning. I have been told that the worst part of Staph food poisoning is knowing that you won’t die!

Avoiding Staph food poisoning is simply a matter of sanitation. Whoever is preparing or handling food should wash his or her hands thoroughly with soap and hot water before beginning and after every interruption. Large quantities of stuffing are best cooked outside the bird, so that the food cooks more quickly. Leftovers must be refrigerated promptly and in shallow containers so that they cool down quickly. Otherwise, a bullet dodged during the initial feast might evolve into a leftover land mine.

Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.