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How to Roast a Turkey (Original Post) elleng Nov 2016 OP
I don't roast a turkey to 165 Major Nikon Nov 2016 #1

Major Nikon

(36,827 posts)
1. I don't roast a turkey to 165
Thu Nov 24, 2016, 07:37 PM
Nov 2016

At that temperature the white meat will be dry and chalky. As far as food safety goes, the only time you need to roast to 165F is if you are carving the turkey immediately when that temperature is reached which is also a bad idea because whatever juices haven't been squeezed out by the higher cooking temp will immediately run out onto the carving board. If you pull the turkey at 165F and let it rest for 20 minutes or more, carry-over cooking will bring the internal temp to well over 175F which is very bad news for the white meat.

This is how I did it this year and the results were incredible.

For a 14lb turkey I dry the skin completely, coat with vegetable oil and salt, let it sit on the counter for an hour with an ice pack on the breasts, and then roast at 375F. I pull the bird from the oven when it gets to an internal temperature of 140F and put it into my smoker set to 150F. This is not so much to smoke it but rather give it a good safe place to rest while I'm preparing everything else. It will hold in the smoker easily for 1-2 hours with no ill effects. Carryover cooking brought the internal temperature of the breast to a peak of 155F after about 30 minutes.

Naturally some will claim a turkey not cooked to 165F isn't safe, but this simply isn't true. Pasteurization is a function of temperature AND time. The reason why the FDA recommends 165F cooking temperature is because this is the safe temperature for a zero rest time. You can actually achieve the exact same level of safety with an internal temperature as low as 136F provided you can hold that temp long enough. The meat tends to be mushy at temps below 150F, so the sweet spot for me is between 150-155F. The required hold time at 150F is just 4 minutes and the turkey will be just as safe as zero minutes at 165F. I'm actually holding at above that temperature for more than 30 minutes.

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