Talking Turkey, Thanksgiving Food Safety
ZANESVILLE, OH – Thanksgiving is a few days away and many people are already working on getting their holiday spreads prepared.
Misty Harmon, an Educator in Family and Consumer Sciences with the Perry County OSU Extension Office, said it’s good to get a jump on preparing your meal a few days before having everyone over and offered some advice to make the holiday just a little safer.
She said depending on the size of your turkey, it could take a few days to unthaw if it’s frozen. Harmon also said if it thaws out faster than you had planned then it can sit in the refrigerator for up to two days before you have to prepare it.
“You can cook your turkey from frozen, the only thing to remember with that frozen is you’re going to have to add more time.” Harmon said. “So, normally if it would take you about 3 and a half hours for that turkey, you’re going to have to add about 50% more of that time on so, that’s about an hour and a half more or a little longer. If you forgot about it, life happened, or didn’t [get it out] or whatever, because things happen, right?”
Harmon also recommends thoroughly washing your hands, cutting boards, as well as wiping down any work surface before and after handling your turkey.
She said even if your bird comes with a pop up thermometer, it’s still very important to use a regular meat thermometer to check to see if your turkey has fully cooked through before serving it up.
“You want to make sure you do that in the thickest part of the breast, also under the inner most part of the wing and the inner part of the thigh.” Harmon said. “So we’re going to be temping that turkey in three different positions, or three different spots to make sure that it gets thoroughly cooked throughout. The minimum temperature we want that turkey to get to is 165, if it got higher than that, that’s okay, if it still says 150, 145, whatever, we need to leave it in there longer until it gets up to that minimum of 165.”
If you need help on Thanksgiving, you can call the USDA Meat and Poultry hotline at 1-888-674-6854.
