Cooking a twenty pound turkey can be intimidating. Once you cook one, you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner. The hardest part of cooking a turkey is the prep work to get it out of the package!
There’s the metal piece, the pop-up timer (or the lack of one), the turkey may still be a bit frozen, and then there’s all the weird stuff inside the bird that you have to take out before cooking. But fear not! These tips will help you cook the perfect turkey that all your friends and family will love. Cooking a turkey is really quite simple, you just need to know what to do.
Tip 1: unwrap the turkey in the sink. If it has frozen, it will be particularly messy. Use a pair of scissors to cut the wrapper. Make sure to wash all areas with soap and water when you are done.
Tip 2: how to get the metal piece out of the turkey. This is the hardest part! You should loosen the grip of the metal on the drumsticks / legs by pushing the end of the leg bone out from under the piece of metal. Once you do that, reach into the turkey and pinch the metal at the base. It is a kind of spring. When you pinch it at the base, it releases the grip and it opens. Then you can finally keep cooking your bird!
Tip 3: Get all the things out of the bird. There will be a neck bone in the cavity and a giblet bag on the back of the bird under the skin. These are used to make your sauce.
Tip 4 – Hopefully you have a fresh turkey or you took it out of the freezer and put it in the fridge to defrost. If it’s still a little frozen, run it under cold water until it thaws. I always rinse the bird and dry it.
Tip 5: One year my turkey didn’t come with the pop-up timer. It must have been lost along the assembly line. If you have a meat thermometer, you can use it to bring it to a temperature of 185 degrees. Stick the thermometer in the densest part of the chest. A turkey that weighs around 20 pounds usually takes 5 to 7 hours to cook. If you don’t have the pop-up timer or meat thermometer, or your pop-up doesn’t appear, don’t worry. You can check the legs and if they giggle a bit and come off the bone, the bird is done. I found out later that pop-up timers can actually be purchased, so you may want to get a bag as a backup for emergencies.
Tip 6: monitor how brown the turkey turns. I always put an aluminum tent on top of my turkeys and monitor how brown they turn. If they get too brown too early, they dry out.
Tip 7 – Don’t forget to remove the stuffing from the bird when it’s done because it will continue to cook and dry out! The turkey will take forever to cool and you will get shreds instead of nice slices.
I hope these seven tips help you with your turkey challenges. For everything you wanted to know about how to cook the perfect turkey, visit my website where I share many great tips to help people overcome their fear of cooking.
