First off, this ain’t my first rodeo – I’ve probably done 20-30 turkey dinners, all more or less successful.
But yesterday was my first one with my new bride, who has a morbid fear of overdone turkey. So I said “ignore the estimated completion times – we’ll just take the temperature, and pull it out when it achieves doneness” (165 degrees breast, 175 degrees drumstick). Agreed. What could go wrong?
So about 30 minutes before the estimated completion, we took our first temperature reading. Holy crap! 175 breast, 185 drumstick! Sound the alarm! All hands on deck! Pull that sucker out of the oven, stat!
And I proceeded to carve it, before it could continue over-cooking while resting. The breast was fine; (surprise surprise) the drumstick was waaay under done, oozing pinkness. Hacked them off the body and put them back in the oven.
So, what gives? It was a brand new digital instant-read thermometer, inserted precisely into the breast and leg meat (not touching bone).
You should be checking the thigh, not the drumstick, and check both sides. Also, the breast is easier to overcook (which you clearly didn’t) so there are different strategies you can take, like covering it with foil, or roasting upside down for the first half.
Calibrate your thermometer by checking the temperature of boiling water as well.
If the breast is perfect, the thigh will be underdone; if the thigh is perfect, the breast will dry. The only wsy to ensure they are both optimal doneness is to pull the turkey when the breast is 165, cut off the legs and thighs, cover the breast/carcass in foil and return the legs and thighs to the roasting pan to braise until they are done. So sayeth Bobby Flay.
Thigh should be tested, not drumstick. Just avoid touching the bone. Current guidelines say to cook the thigh to 165F. I let it rest a good 30 minutes. Breast was juicy, legs perfectly done.
I’m actually trying a recipe that involves separating the turkey parts before cooking. (I’m a day late this year, it’s in the oven now.) The breasts get removed from the carcass, placed together, wrapped with the skin and trussed with some twine. Place in a rack over aromatic vegetables, roast, take the pieces out when they reach the right temperature.
Here’s the part I had trouble with. After all the good pieces are removed, the recipe also said to cut up the remaining carcass into one-inch pieces, brown in a dutch oven, deglaze, boil, and simmer (liquid for the gravy). What kind of knife to they have that cuts up a turkey carcass? I think mine would have taken a band saw.
The only way to perfectly cook a turkey is the ridiculously complicated Julia Child method, which ruins the experience (IMHO) by turning what should be one of the most beautiful dinner presentations into a bucket of KFC.
However, these steps help a lot:
[ol]
[li]Let the turkey (in the sealed wrap) come to a stable temp in a cold water bath overnight. Both bird and water should be about 65 degrees when you get up.[/li][li]Do a full hot-water wash and soak once you have the naked bird - fill the cavity with hot water once or twice and wash/soak it in hot water for around ten minutes IMMEDIATELY before you dry it and stuff or prepare it.[/li][li]Roast it breast-down at a higher temp (350-375) for 45 to 75 minutes, depending on bird weight (14-15 to 30 pounds).[/li][li]Flip the bird, put foil on the leg and wing tips, and roast at 300-325 until it reaches 170 in the breast and 180+ in the thigh.[/li][li]Pull it out, tent it, and finish everything else for carving in 30 minutes.[/li][/ol]
I turn out perfect bird after perfect bird with this process (in a convection oven), with no turning, basting or screwing around. The breast tends to be a little dry for those who like it oozing juice (IMHO: yuck!) but everything is cooked well and that’s what the perfect gravy you’re working on in that 30 minutes is for.
As with big cuts of beef, bringing the carcass up to an even, relatively high temp before putting it in the oven is key. If the deep carcass is still icy or near-icy, it will never cook properly without drying out the breast and burning the points.
First off you probably didn’t hit the coldest part of the breast with the temp probe. The breast was probably near 160 at the coolest part.
Give the hard job to the lazy guy, he will show you the easy way to do it.
So listen up and learn.
Breast is done at 160, thigh at 180. 20 degree difference.
Pull you bird out of the fridge an hour or two before you want to cook it.
Take a gallon ziplock bag fill it with ice and lay over the breast. The breast will stay about 40f while the thighs will warm to 60f or so.
Pull the ice off when you toss it in the oven.
As the breasts will start 20 degrees cooler than the thighs they will both get done at the same time.
Easy isn’t it?
I’d also question whether it works. The breast is a large surface high on the carcass and will absorb heat much more readily than the rest of the bird. Chilling it a little won’t make much net difference. If this has “worked” for you, I’d suggest it’s for other reasons than creating an initial temperature differential.
I googled this and found it in several lists of cooking/Thanksgiving suggestions, many of which I know are whack or non-working. (F’rex, “It doesn’t matter what kind of potatoes you use for mashed” - complete BS, as anyone who’s tried to turn out fluffy mashed from waxy potatoes knows.) Most seem to be the new generation of “science cooks” who have fascinating things to say about how food cooks but have inferior recipes. When an experienced method kitchen like Cook’s or ATK says it, believe it - but not when a moonlighting physicist says it.
The thing I’ve noticed when using a thermometer is that if you leave it in, heat travels down the (metal) temperature probe shaft and creates a warmer zone around the thermometer, which obligingly reads too high a temperature. So I tend to insert the temperature probe only when I want to take a reading, and then take it out. An alternative would be to leave the probe in all the time, but when the thermometer indicates done, remove the probe and stick it in somewhere else as a check.
Alton brown used two thermometers in his episode about stuffing (the only time he cooked a turkey without butterflying it.) Though it was probably the stuffing that helped make sure everything got done at the right time.
The past few years I have been buying Jennie-O frozen turkey in the bag that goes straight from the freezer to the oven at the set temp (I think it is 375) for four hours. Both times I remember at the four hour mark (the early side of the range) I pulled it out and found the breast temp internally to be far in excess of 175, so it was overdone. However, because of the tented bag you cook it in, it did not come out crappy and dry. Rather this was very forgiving and quite a good and tasty turkey.
I’ve only been in charge of the turkey once, and I did it with herb butter under the skin, breast side down for the first half of cooking time. It came out fabulous, if I may say so.
::: shrug:::
Picked up this tip on a serious BBQ website about 20 years ago. I’ve been using it ever since. It works for me.
Everyone I have told this to and has tried says it works.
Combination of sturdy kitchen shears and a nice cleaver. I always chop up the carcass when I’m turning it into turkey broth.
Oh, and the way I do it is start roasting it upside down for 30-45 min or so, then flip it and proceed. It’s supposed to help avoid overdone/dried-out breast meat. Tent it with foil near the end if you find the rest still isn’t done.
I’ve used Alton Brown’s method the last few years and it’s worked perfectly:
Stick the thermometer deep into the breast.
Cook at 500 degrees for 30 minutes (to brown). Legs facing the back of the oven which is hotter in most ovens.
After the 30 minutes, cover the breast of the chicken with foil and turn the temperature down to 350.
When thermometer in the breast reads 161, take the bird out of the oven, cover and rest for at least 30 minutes.
Yesterday my turkey was done way earlier than I expected so I covered it in foil and it actually rested for almost 2 hours before we carved it. It was still very warm and perfectly done - moist breast meat and fully cooked dark meat.
The bottom line is that turkeys aren’t that hard to cook, no matter what method you use. It takes real work to screw one up; as long as you don’t put it in the oven frozen and use a thermometer to make sure the top and bottom are somewhere in the cooked/safe range, it will be pretty good.
The fussing around is for those of us for whom “pretty good” isn’t good enough, or people who want impossibilities like a fully cooked undercarriage and moisty breast. Most “secret” or “guaranteed” techniques have basically been shown worthless or of very little help up against the basic verities of time and temp.
And IMVVVVHO, brining sucks and ruins a perfectly good bird.
