Roast with the most: chef Lisa Goodwin-Allen’s Christmas turkey at The Game Bird restaurant in London
(Picture: Press handout)Every year at Christmas time, families enjoy a joyous and traditional feast, the piece de resistance of which is often the turkey.
However, cooking the perfect big bird can be a challenge, with seasoning and serving methods among the key considerations.
Ahead of the big day, food microbiologist Dr Lynn McMullen from the University of Alberta in Canada gave her top tips to Global News about how to safely cook a delicious turkey.
Here is what she advised.
1. Thaw your turkey at the right temperature
Dr McMullen said that thawing at the wrong temperature would lead to organisms growing that could make you sick.
“You want to thaw it where it’s cold, where it stays cold,” she said. “So, I’ll typically take a turkey out a week before I want to cook it and I put it in my fridge. ... And then it slowly thaws out.”
Apart from ensuring no bacteria grow on the turkey, this method helps to keep your fridge cold as the icy bird thaws. As such, this saves you energy.
2. Never wash poultry
“Any cold poultry bird is washed by the processor right before it’s packaged,” Dr McMullen said. “So, when you take it out of the package and you put it in the sink and wash it, what you actually end up doing is spreading any contamination that might be on it in your kitchen.
“So, it increases the risk that you’ll contaminate something else that you’ll eat without cooking.”
Dr McMullen said it was better to cook the turkey rather than wash it. She said anything questionable that was on the turkey would be eliminated by the cooking process.
3. Use a thermometer
When cooking your turkey, it’s important to use this to make sure it is cooked through and safe to consume.
Dr McMullen said: “Put the thermometer into the thickest part of the breast or into the thigh and make sure it gets to about 77 degrees C (170°F) as an internal temperature.”
She said that some people advised not to stuff a turkey. However, she said would-be chefs could still stuff it as long as they made sure the stuffing reached the 77-degree mark.
4. Pay attention to the juices that are coming out of the cooked turkey
We generally avoid poultry if it has a pink hue, fearful of catching salmonella and other diseases from uncooked meat.
However, Dr McMullen said not all pink poultry was dangerous. She said “if it’s undercooked, it will be a little bit pink. But if they’ve taken the temperature and it’s still pink, it’s okay”.
However, if the juices from the turkey are still dark red, it isn’t safe to consume and should be cooked further.
5. Don’t let your leftovers sit on the table for more than two hours
As we wine and dine, many of us leave our Christmas food on the table for hours, planning to come back for seconds.
However, Dr McMullen said it was not safe to leave leftovers of turkey out for more than two hours. “There are some organisms that will multiply really really fast and they can make you sick,” she said. “So, you don’t want to give them a chance to start multiplying.”
