Is salmonella (and/or the other bugs we’re afraid of) killed by freezing? These days an awful lot of us buy frozen turkeys.
No. Slows growth but does not kill them.
Interesting anecdote but applies only to a single restaurant that used a single farm. This can’t be used to characterize what is typical/average or what the consumer would expect when buying a brand-name turkey from a supermarket.
OK now I am HUNGRY. Gonna have to roast up a bird to Julia’s recipe.
The Late Show style opening is pretty hilarious.
I just have to soapbox
Stuffing in the bird is one of those small things that makes life worth living. I get very upset when people take that away. All chicken dinners (and Thanksgiving dinners) in the Olds household have in-bird stuffing. Mrs. Olds has a few tricks intended to reduce risk, but they can pry my delicious in bird stuffing from my cold dead hands.
Occasionally I can see a guest is uncomfortable with the in-bird stuffing. I berate and belittle them
(Ok, I’m not really that much of a jerk. I only do that to my in-laws, but that’s because I don’t really like them)
FWIW, I am a biologist and Mrs. Olds is a chemist by training.
You could say the same thing about any part of the turkey not directly exposed to the heat source. The issue isn’t whether the stuffing reaches the proper bacteria-killing temperature before the rest of the bird (which would be physically impossible, barring some bizarro recipe where you cook the bird by sticking an immersion heater into the cavity). Rather, it’s whether the stuffing reaches this temperature at all (and also, as the OP notes, whether the bacteria are present in the first place).
Again this year I will be stuffing our turkey. We have the bird ordered and it will be killed/prepared according to the local farm’s schedule. Haven’t had a problem from their birds yet, and we eat a lot of fresh turkey.
Just be sure that it had its flue jabs:
I think that’s really the telling point- the seriousness of getting sick from the big food-borne illnesses (salmonella, listeria, e-coli, campylobacter, etc…) is high enough that it’s not worth risking it, even though the chance is pretty small that you’ll actually get sick.
So maybe there’s not more contamination, but rather that we recognize it for what it is now, and there’s an easy way to avoid that illness, so that’s what they suggest.
But chances are that the vast majority of people who stuff their birds will come out just fine- it’s not like there was a rash of post-Thankgiving diarrhea and ER visits because of serious food-borne illness in years past. (or maybe there was, and we just don’t realize it, not being epidemiologists and all?)
My former butcher (he retired) used to swear by having the spine removed from turkeys and chickens especially if you planned to smoke them. He claimed that the source of most contamination in fowl was in the spinal cord.
He also pointed out that the sawing out the spine would allow the turkey to be cooked in a butterfly position so the meat would cook evenly and quicker.
I smoked a few of his spineless turkeys and had some very delicious meat. The presentation sucked of course (flat turkey just doesn’t look as festive as one that is whole) and the stuffing had to be made outside of the turkey, but hey, good eats.
Speaking of Good Eats, Alton Brown broke down and did a show that included cooking the stuffing in the turkey. Of course, the stuffing is essentially cooked before it’s inserted, but that’s standard.
The proper solution to this is to have so much stuffing it won’t all fit in the bird, and you have to cook some of it in a casserole pan. As a side benefit, they don’t eat your stuffed stuffing. Win!
Overcrowded factory-farm conditions are more prevalent now than decades ago.
If you cook a turkey to at least 165[sup]o[/sup], you won’t have any problems.
The stuffing is the best part. It doesn’t have to be cooked until it’s dried out; it has to be cooked until it’s done.
Regards,
Shodan
When I smoke a turkey, it’s unstuffed and cavity-downward over the pan of boiling water (in a water smoker), so much of the heat is going into the flesh of the bird through the cavity space. Cooks plenty fast, as long as it was thawed first (and brined, in my recipe). Never had a contamination problem leaving in assorted CNS tissue in the bird.
As to roasting, we also roast “unstuffed”. No bread dressing in there. Instead, we use cut citrus fruit (lemons, oranges, maybe limes) and stalks of celery. The meat, and the gravy, is kind of citrusy and slightly tangy, but we like that. And the bird’s cavity isn’t packed full (lots of little gaps around the pieces) so I think heat gets in pretty well, and no one is eating the citrus or celery afterward anyway.
That said, I’ve never had a bad experience with dressing in a roasted bird. I wouldn’t deny that it could happen, only saying it hasn’t happened to my family yet.
The key thing about all the advice about not cooking stuffing in the bird is that it’s directed at a nation of cooks who prepare only a few real meals per year. Stories are legion of folks calling the “turkey hotline” asking how many minutes to cook a frozen 20# bird, and being aghast when told it can’t be done today.
So the advice to not cook stuffing in the bird is directed at the rank and file US cook who can barely roast a fully defrosted unstuffed bird safely. Much less stuff and cook a previously frozen bird to be done at a preselected time of day.
In any situation, good advice for the incompetent is different from good advice for the expert.
That’s just complete nonsense.