Roasting a whole turkey can be difficult to do well, as evidenced by the large number of people who claim to dislike the bird because it’s dry and bland. It is not the poultry’s fault, though. Turkey in and of itself is not any drier than chicken. It all comes down how it’s treated — most importantly, that it’s not overcooked.
There’s a lot of turkey-roasting advice out there on how to achieve a moist, tender bird. (No, you do not need to baste it. Yes, there’s an argument to be made for roasting it breast-side-down.) Here are five of our top tips for juicy, tender meat when it comes time to cook your turkey this Thanksgiving.
Use a leave-in probe thermometer
The most important step in avoiding dry turkey is not overcooking it. And as I’ve said time and time again, the best way to determine the doneness of any meat is with an instant-read thermometer. But even better is a leave-in probe thermometer, which continuously measures the temperature of the turkey without you needing to open the oven. The most useful models have an alarm you can set to go off once the turkey has reached your desired temperature. (I recommend this one from ThermoWorks.)
Speaking of temperature, the Agriculture Department says that the safe internal temperature for a turkey is 165 degrees. It recommends confirming this in the thickest part of the breast, innermost part of the thigh and innermost part of the wing, all away from the bone. However, because of the different compositions of white and dark meat, that is not the temperature many chefs choose when cooking turkey (and chicken).
Some recommend cooking breast meat as much as 15 degrees less, to just 150 degrees, for optimum juiciness and tenderness. You may think it unsafe, but eliminating bacterial risk is a function of both time and temperature. Salmonella “lethality” is achieved when turkey is maintained at 150 degrees for about 4 minutes. (It’s about 3 minutes for chicken.) This is where that programmable probe thermometer also comes in handy because you can use it to monitor the temperature of the bird after it’s out of the oven, too.
“But the time-temperature matrix depends on a number of factors, including the percentage of fat, relative humidity and how long the meat spends in the temperature zone of 50 to 130 degrees while it’s heating,” assistant recipes editor Becky Krystal wrote. “When the meat reaches 165 degrees, there is no need to factor in a holding time, as the meat at that point has already met the threshold of sufficient salmonella reduction. With so many variables, it’s easy to see why the U.S. government has settled on this one safe temperature across the board.”
Dark meat, on the other hand, becomes more tender the longer it cooks, as more connective tissue breaks down. This means it’s great when cooked to 175 degrees and continues to improve up to about 210 degrees, at which point the flavor and texture start to deteriorate.
This large discrepancy in optimal temperatures is why the most persnickety cooks advocate for cooking a turkey in parts. For the more laid-back among us who decide to roast their turkey whole (or at least mostly so, as in the case of spatchcocking), you can slow down the cooking of the breast meat by shielding it with a layer or two of foil. (See assistant recipe editor Olga Massov’s new recipe for Roast Turkey With Apple Cider Glaze.) This trick is better employed during the beginning of the cooking process rather than at the end, so that the skin can crisp up.
Spatchcock it
Spatchcocking, or butterflying, a turkey is when you remove the backbone (save it for stock) and flatten the bird. (If you don’t want to or can’t do it yourself, ask your butcher to do it for you.) This technique encourages more even cooking between the white meat and dark meat, especially in conventional ovens. Plus, your bird will cook in a fraction of the time compared with when left whole. Check out my Tarragon-Butter Roasted Spatchcocked (Butterflied) Turkey for one method.
Dry brine it
Dry brining is a fancy term for sprinkling the turkey with salt and refrigerating it uncovered for up to 3 days. This seasons the meat throughout — instead of just the surface — and also makes it more tender. Is it completely necessary if you don’t have the time or space? No. But it’s a nice guardrail against overcooking. And as a bonus, the skin dries out, which helps it become nice and crispy when roasting.
Bag it
A couple of Thanksgivings ago, Krystal recommended cooking a turkey in a roasting bag. “Using a bag has quite a few advantages, but the biggest are how much it can reduce the cook time and how it keeps the meat moist and juicy,” Krystal wrote about her recipe for Turkey in a Bag With Lemon and Herbs. It works similarly to any other packet cooking method, such as the French en papillote, basically steaming the bird and gently infusing the meat with whatever aromatics you’ve included. The downside is that though the skin will brown, it will not get as crisp as other cooking methods.
Let it rest
Last but certainly not least, your turkey needs to rest before carving — at least 30 minutes and up to an hour or more (but no longer than 2 hours). This time is necessary for the bird to go through carryover cooking, then cooling down.
“The hotter the meat, the more energy the internal moisture has, leading to higher vapor pressure that pushes liquid outward when the meat is cut,” Serious Eats editorial director Daniel Gritzer wrote. “As the meat rests (and therefore cools) that vapor pressure decreases, and so does the juice loss. It’s not about reabsorption or thickening as the juices cool, which is another common explanation that’s been offered over the years. It’s simply about pressure.” With that in mind, don’t tent the bird with foil as it rests, which will only slow down the cooling process intended to prevent moisture loss. Instead of digging in right away, use that time to turn the turkey drippings into gravy, as in my Roast Turkey With Caramelized Onion and Miso Gravy.
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