Like many, our family is doing a scaled-down TG, and as primary cook in our immediate family it’s up to me to make the dinner. I am very confident in pulling it off, but I’ve never made a big bird with stuffing before. I seem to recall reading in the last few years that actually stuffing the turkey is not safe, because the stuffing is exposed to raw turkey juices at the start and may not get up to temperature at the center to safely kill all the bugs. So the recommendation is to cook the stuffing separately.
I want to make the stuffing both ways-- actually stuff some, and bake the rest in a separate pan. That way we get a lot of stuffing, and we get the best of both types-- the baked stuffing is crispier, and the stuffed stuffing is infused with delicious turkey juices. Do I really need to worry about food safety with the stuffed stuffing, and if so, any workarounds-- like maybe heating some stuffing up to germ-killing temp and stuffing the turkey after it’s been cooking awhile?
If you really really want to have the stuffing inside the Turkey, you can make the stuffing and put it in the Turkey right before it goes in the oven. Then you can check the temperature of the stuffing itself with your thermometer when you are checking the temperature of the bird to make sure it is at 165.
You may have to cook (nuke?) the stuffing a little bit more afterwards if you are concerned the turkey is getting overdone.
Thanks Folly, I thought of that, but if bad bugs have been breeding for the full length of the cooking time, nuking at the end wouldn’t remove the toxins created by the bugs, right? That’s why I thought of maybe adding heated stuffing after the turkey’s been cooking awhile.
I have had more success by stuffing the smaller neck-end rather than the main cavity - pushing the stuffing up under the skin. That way, you get the flavour from the bird, but without upsetting your cooking times/internal temperatures.
I’m not concerned with longer cooking time-- I have routinely gotten up at 4am to get a smoker started for pulled pork, so safety is my only concern. If it takes longer for a turkey with delicious stuffed stuffing, so be it.
I recently aquired one of these remote thermometers. Continuously monitor the temperature of your roast without having to open the oven. Two probes so you can put one in your bird and one in your stuffing. Cook until both are up to temp.
I would not roast without one again. Sooo much easier than having to open the oven all the time to keep checking.
You definitely don’t want to stuff the Turkey the night before or anything, but I’ve never heard concerns about the cooking time itself. Just about not reaching a high enough temp.
The devil is the details, but you don’t want stuffing, possibly still warm from cooking the veggies, sitting in the fridge in the danger zone before finally cooling down enough to slow down bacteria growth. All that time has to be added to the time it takes to get it up to a safer temp in the oven.
The trouble is that a stuffed bird will mean your internal meat will take longer to get to temperature - which either means the meat will be underdone, or the rest of the bird will get seriously overcooked - and NO ONE wants a dry old turkey.
By putting the stuffing in the neck end and particularly under the skin, you won’t have the same jeopardy, and it also helps keep the outer meat moist.
I used to always stuff the turkey, and doomsayers be damned - it just TASTED better when done in the bird. Of course I always left the act of doing the stuffing, until just before it went in the oven. Nobody ever got sick.
That said, I’ve since gone with an out-of-the-bird stuffing that has loads of bacon (which gives it that in-the-bird moistness). As I now always brine the bird, dried-out meat probably wouldn’t be a huge issue, but we don’t mess that extra step of stuffing / unstuffing. And having brined it, there are a LOT of pan juices to make gravy to add flavor to the stuffing.
Nuke the stuffing BEFORE putting it in the Turkey. It cool down of course, but should get back up to cooked temperature by the time the bird is done (and the bird will be slightly more evenly cooked, too). It means you need to put the cold stuffing in a plastic bag (or wrapped in plastic somehow) then into the turkey, then back out (so it’s now just the right size/shape), nuke it to temp, then using gloves unwrap the bag and re-insert into turkey.
Just butterfly the turkey, put in on a flat cooling rack on a sheet pan, with the stuffing spread on the pan (under the turkey). Stuffing gets to temp and gets turkey juice auto-basting. And the dark and white meat get done at the same time. Unless you really really really need to look exactly like a Norman Rockwell painting, this is really the way to go for best turkey and stuffing.
This was my idea, combined with adding the heated stuffing after the turkey has cooked for awhile to prevent it from cooling back down. But it would probably be fine to heat the stuffing and just stuff at the start, I’m guessing.
The solutions I have seen for this are putting your stuffing in a food grade reusable cloth bag, although finding the right size can be harder depending on the size of your turkey! It was a solution Alton Brown used on Good Eats and is useful for keeping the stuffing together, while also being microwaveable.
Personally, I have no faith in stuffing that’s been inside a turkey, even when I’m the one who was in control of the cooking process, much less if someone else is cooking for me. Many, many years ago I had a bout of stomach unpleasantness after having Thanksgiving at a friends house (I was away from home in College and getting home for the holidays wasn’t a good option). Their turkey was moist and delicious, but underdone by my tastes (everyone is different) and that meant the stuffing was at risk for improper temps as well. I will never know of course.
When I make stuffing, I cheat. I cook it on it’s own, but use a generous helping of my homemade turkey/chicken stock concentrate. A few times a year, when I’m making homemade stock, I’ll take a batch and reduce it by an additional 50%. So if my normal stock sets up like a loose Jell-O, this stuff needs a knife to cut! Using this adds a metric ton of mouthfeel and poultry flavor that will offset the loss from cooking inside the bird. For me, I always felt that the greatness of in-bird stuffing was from the partially rendered collagen you got from the turkey during the traditional long cooking, and this replicates it.
Mild hijack…I grew up in the northeastern US and assumed that you ALWAYS stuffed roast chickens and turkeys. Years later, I moved to NC and married into a traditional southern family. I quickly learned that stuffing cooked in a turkey will KILL YOU DEAD RIGHT THERE!! In fact, my in-laws distinguish between “stuffing” (which WILL KILL YOU DEAD RIGHT THERE!!) and “dressing,” which is “stuffing” baked in a pan…as God intended and which is safe to eat.
This is important to note. I definitely grew up eating stuffed chickens and turkeys. Generations have eaten bread-stuffed fowl without incident. Do we know how often people get sick from eating a stuffed turkey?
Of course, my grandmother once heard Martha Stewart say, “The first thing to do in cooking a chicken is to remove the pop-up indicator; it only tells you when the chicken is overcooked.” and responded with, “I wait for it to pop up, then cook it for another hour.” When you are massively overcooking your birds, the stuffing is rendered much safer.
And lets not forget, that a LOT of old stuffing options include(d) a metric TON of salt. Whether it be adding canned broth, soup, or bagged stuffing base, that was all loaded with enough salt to sit on a counter for 4 hours and laugh at any bugs that tried to grow in a sodium wasteland.