Is it just me or were turkeys in general way overcooked in the past? I have memories going back a decade or three regarding turkey day.
My recollection is most turkeys were dry dry dry. You NEEDED that gravy to choke down that chunk of meat. Yeah, there was the occasional Uncle Bob who seemed to know how to cook a turkey but most people seemed to be following some simple rule like “cook for 12 hours at 475 and its done! Easy peasy”.
So, is it just me or have Americans in general finally mostly learned to cook a turkey?
The meat thermometers with markings that give “done” temperatures for different types of meat used to be way off. They would say, for example, that poultry should be cooked to 185 F. In fact, it is done at 160 to 165 F. I still see cooking instructions that tell people to overcook their meat. It’s common, for example, for recipes to say that beef is cooked to medium-rare at 140 F (not 120 or 125 F).
I assume that pop-up buttons were similarly miscalibrated.
I have no problem if the meat is slightly dry; it differentiates real turkey from the sliced crap you get at the supermarket.
But I never brined a turkey and I never had it come out dry. I think the main difference is that they’re cooking at a lower heat then they have in the past.
How sure are you those temperatures are safe, especially for pork or ground beef?
My meat thermometer (probably purchased 10-15 years ago) has this scale:
145 Beef Rare
160 Ground Beef / Beef Med. / Ham
170 Beef Well / Pork
180 Poultry
All I can say is, thank god for cooking bags. My mom can’t cook to save her life, but thanks to cooking bags, the turkey is always reasonably moist. I couldn’t even begin to choke down a piece of white meat as a kid (the dark days, pre-cooking bag ) but now it’s edible.
