Turkey Timings
And the Importance of Resting
If you’re cooking turkey this Christmas, then our advice is forget all that stuff about so much time needed for so much weight of bird. Cooking a bird properly is not about timing, it’s about temperature. So what’s going on here?
Temperature - what’s the magic number?
Turkey is officially cooked at 74º C. That’s when everyone agrees it’s safe to eat, and that is a temperature you can be confident about. So does that mean you take the turkey out of the oven when it reaches 74º. Absolutely not.
The magic number you are looking for is….. 67º When the leg meat reaches that temperature, out it comes and it is time for the next cooking process: the Carryover.
Carryover Cooking
Better known as Resting, but a far more appropriate name, the final cooking process for the bird is Carryover Cooking, and it should be seen as an essential part of the cooking process, not just an optional add on.
Resting matters, because it allows the juices to thicken and the temperature to stabilise. But first, the temperature continues to go up, sometimes by 10º, which is why you have to take the bird out of the oven before it gets to 74º. Larger cuts, eg turkey, take longer to reach full temperature, and even though the bird is out of the oven, you will still need to keep an eye on that temperature.
What actually happens during Resting, and what is myoglobin?
To understand this, first you might consider why is turkey breast so white, when the leg meat is brown. Harold McGee has the answer. The colouration of meat is due to oxygen-storing myoglobin. The muscles that require a lot of oxygen have a greater storage capacity than those that need little. “Chickens and turkeys do a lot of standing around, but little if any flying, so their breast muscle is white, their legs dark. Game birds on the other hand spend more time on the wing, and their breast meat may be as dark as their drumsticks.”
People say they don’t like rare steak, because they don’t like it “bloody”. This is a misnomer. In fact, most of the blood is taken out of meat during processing. What the redness in both steak, and brown turkey meat is, is myoglobin, and it’s there to transport oxygen through muscle.
If you rest meat after cooking it allows the juices – the myogoblin – to be redistibuted and reabsorbed throughout the meat, making it juicy. During the Carryover process, the bird continues to cook after it’s out of the oven, and during this time the heat, trapped inside the food, moves inwards. This is the magic of resting. The process is all about texture, not temperature.
How long should it Rest?
We’re back on the clock again, and time is not our friend here. Go back to temperature. If you keep an eye on the temp of the bird, the best time to carve it is after the rise in temperature stops, and the dial falls a couple of degrees.
The Set Up
The best set up for resting is a wire rack over a chopping board, but really a plate is fine also. If you cover the bird, you risk that the skin will lose its crispness, but you will gain in moistness as the turkey steams under the cover.
How do we measure temperature?
The instruments you need for temperature generally, are a Thermapen One digital thermometer. This is the absolute best, and costs about the same as the turkey! The iGrill from Weber is great for leaving in both a leg and in the oven to continuously monitor the temperature. The last type of thermometer is an Infrared Gun, but you don’t really need one of those for turkey.
Does the stuffing make a difference?
Stuffing only makes a difference in the early stages. Elizabeth David advises that you can make stuffing in advance, but “Do not take it frozen stiff from the refrigerator and put it straight into the bird, for the heat takes a long time to penetrate and if over-chilled the butter in the stuffing does not then start its work of lubricating the bird from the early stages of cooking.”
Don’t Forget The Sprouts!
A note on Sprouts from Niki Segnit’s The Flavour Thesaurus : “Some might see the presence of the Brussels sprout on the Christmas table as a Scrooge-like corrective to all the fun, but its role is essential. The bitterness of sprouts, which they owe to their high levels of glucosilonates, offsets the hefty turkey, stuffing, bread sauce, roast potatoes, parsnips, chipolatas and chestnuts.”
If we’re not cooking Turkey do we still need to rest?
Our answer to this would be yes. Nut roasts and casseroles all benefit from resting, as do certain dense types of fish, like tuna or monkfish, which firm up during resting time, reducing flaking and making slicing easier.
Once it’s done?
Good advice from Derry Clarke here: “Remove the turkey from the oven and once you’re happy with the temperature, you can reduce the oven temperature to 70º and leave the turkey in place for at least an hour. You can hold food for 1 to 2 hours at this temperature.”
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And finally, during that resting time, here’s John’s Christmas playlist
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Worked a treat after thirty years of trial and error. 🙏
Couldn't agree more about the resting. Nice playlist too - a crossover with mine, in the next post! Great minds etc