How do I cook a turkey?!
Answers: I have a 7.2kg frozen turkeym that I need to have on the table at 6pm tomorrow. Do i need to defrost it today, if so how? and how long do I cook it for?
Are you having a laugh? You should have started defrosting it yesterday.
just leave it out in your kitchen and that will start defrosting it now ( over night ) 20 minutes per pound plus 20 minutes , sorry i'm old and still on old weights
You will need to defrost it for 24 hrs prior to cooking.
I think it is 45 mins per pound but it should say on it.
Double check and phone a friend or mum !
Good luck I
No chance, that size will need 48 hours to defrost in a cool room
Defrost it now. It needs about 20 minutes a pound to cook, then an additional 20 minutes. It is domne when you peierce the breat and the juices run clear. One way is to place streaky bacon slices over the breat area. Cover in tin foil, bung it in the oven, about gas mark 5 and off you go. Once cooked let it stand or about 20 mins or so to 'relax'
put in oven
turn oven on
take turkey out
you need to defrost it now if it hasn't defrosted by the time you need to cook it then fill the sink up with COLD water and soke it in there for two hours
be careful or you all will be sick if its not defrosted before you start cooking
Preparation time: About 5 hours.
1 turkey, approx. 15 lbs.*
Juice of a lemon
Salt and pepper
Olive oil or melted butter
1/2 yellow onion, peeled and quartered
Tops and bottoms of a bunch of celery
2 carrots
Parsley
Sprigs of fresh rosemary, thyme
* Need help figuring out how big a turkey to get? Butterball has a turkey calculator that helps you figure out just how many pounds you need. In general, plan for:
12-15 lb turkey for 10-12 people
15-18 lb turkey for 14-16 people
18-22 lb turkey for 20-22 people
1 To start, if the turkey has been refrigerated, bring it to room temperature before cooking. Keep it in its plastic wrapping until you are ready to cook it. While in the refrigerator, and or while you are bringing it to room temp, have the bird resting in a pan, so that if the plastic covering leaks for any reason, you are confining the juices to the pan. If you get a frozen turkey, you will need to defrost it in the refrigerator for several days first. Allow approximately 5 hours of defrosting for every pound. So, if you have a 15 pound turkey, it will take about 75 hours to defrost it in the refrigerator, or around 3 days.
Handle a raw turkey with the same amount of caution as when you handle raw chicken - use a separate cutting board and utensils to avoid contaminating other foods. Wash you hands with soap before touching anything else in the kitchen. Use paper towels to clean up.
Remove the neck and giblets (heart, gizzard, liver). Use the heart and gizzard for making stock for the stuffing. The neck can be cooked along side the turkey or saved for turkey soup.
Note that if your turkey comes with a plastic piece holding the legs together, check the instructions on the turkey's package. Most likely you do not need to remove those plastic ties for cooking (unless you plan to cook your turkey at a very high temperature). If you remove the plastic ties, you will need to use kitchen string to tie the legs together.
2 Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
3 Wash out the turkey with water. Pull out any remaining feather stubs in the turkey skin. Pat the turkey dry with paper towels. Lather the inside of the cavity with the juice of half a lemon. Take a small handful of salt and rub all over the inside of the turkey.
4 In this method of cooking a turkey, we don't make the stuffing in the turkey because doing so adds too much to the cooking time. For flavor, put in inside the turkey a half a yellow onion, peeled and quartered, a bunch of parsley, a couple of carrots, and some tops and bottoms of celery. You may need to cap the body cavity with some aluminum foil so that the stuffing doesn't easily fall out. Close up the turkey cavity with either string (not nylon string!) or metal skewers. Make sure that the turkey's legs are tied together, held close to the body, and tie a string around the turkey body to hold the wings in close.
The neck cavity can be stuffed with parsley and tied closed with thin skewers and string.
5 Rub either melted butter or olive oil all over the outside of the turkey. Sprinkle salt generously all over the outside of the turkey (or have had it soaking in salt-water brine before starting this process). Sprinkle pepper over the turkey.
6 Place turkey BREAST DOWN on the bottom of a rack over a sturdy roasting pan big enough to catch all the drippings. This is the main difference between the way mom makes turkey and everyone else. Cooking the turkey breast down means the skin over the breast will not get so brown. However, all of the juices from the cooking turkey will fall down into the breast while cooking. And the resulting bird will have the most succulent turkey breast imaginable.
Add several sprigs of fresh (if possible) thyme and rosemary to the outside of the turkey.
7 Chop up the turkey giblets (gizzard, heart, liver). Put into a small saucepan, cover with water, add salt. Bring to simmer for an hour or so to help make stock for the stuffing (see stuffing recipe).
8 Put the turkey in the oven. Check the cooking directions on the turkey packaging. Gourmet turkeys often don't take as long to cook. With the turkeys mom gets, she recommends cooking time of about 15 minutes for every pound. For the 15 lb turkey, start the cooking at 400 F for the first 1/2 hour. Then reduce the heat to 350 F for the next 2 hours. Then reduce the heat further to 225 F for the next hour to hour and a half.
If you want the breast to be browned as well, you can turn over the bird for the last 15-20 minutes of cooking, at an oven temp of 300°F. (Oven must be at least 250°F for browning to occur.) Note that if you do this, you will have a higher risk of overcooking the turkey breast. We never worry about browning the breast.
Start taking temperature readings with a meat thermometer, inserted deep into the thickest part of the turkey breast and thigh, a half hour before the turkey should be done. The dark meat in the thigh should be about 175 F. The white meat in the breast should be 160 F to 165 F. If you don't have a meat thermometer, spear the breast with a knife. The turkey juices should be clear, not pink.
9 Once you remove the turkey from the oven, let it rest for 15-20 minutes. Turn the turkey breast side up to carve it. (See San Francisco Chronicle's Olivia Wu on carving a turkey and Bon Appetit's instructions on how to carve a turkey.)
Making Turkey Gravy
Scrape all the drippings off of the bottom of the roasting pan. Pour drippings into a smaller skillet. Ladle off excess fat with a gravy spoon and save for possible use later. In a separate small bowl take a quarter cup of corn starch and add just enough water to dissolve the corn starch. Beat cornstarch with a spoon to remove lumps. Slowly add the cornstarch mixture to the drippings, stirring constantly. You may not end up using all of the cornstarch mixture. Only add as much as you need to get the desired thickness. Allow time for the cornstarch to thicken the gravy. Add salt, pepper, sage, thyme, or other seasonings to taste.
Here is what you do. Right now. Go put it in a large clean bucket or sink and fill with enough that it floats. If you can, weight it down or flip it periodically. It will thaw fairly quickly and should be thawed by late tonight or tomorrow morning. Just keep and eye on how cold the water is, don't want it to spoil.
When it's ready take out the giblets and any other parts that are inside. Season the bird inside and out. I like to cut and onion and an apple in half, then stuff those in the cavity. If you aren't that hungry for the skin, see if your market has oven roasting bags. They are plastic but will cook at medium oven temps. That will keep the bird nice and moist. If not don't sweat it, get a meat thermometer and do not overcook it. One of the more important things is to let the turkey rest for at least 10 minutes before you start carving.
I've done turkeys many times before in those roasting bags. As long as I got the inside stuff out, they were fine, even if pairtly frozen. The roasting bags will cut your cooking time also. I did an 11.4 kg turkey in just over 3.5 hours in a roasting bag. After it thawed of course.
7.2kg is close to a 16lb bird (15.873lb)
My book says 3 days in the refrigerator for an 18lb bird.
leave it in the plastic bag and soak in warm water fill the sink
you may have problems getting the plastic bags of giblets and the neck out from inside the bird..
when you do it might speed it up some
325F for 5 1/2 hr
temp.- - in the thigh 180 - 185F (if it is still cold inside I'd do 185F)..
Good luck
Run out to your local Home Depot or Lowe's type place and grab a turkey deep-fryer and several jugs of peanut oil from the supermarket. I think Wal-Mart has the fryers too.
Much faster way to cook a turkey, makes it juicy, crispy, and very tasty. just be careful, make sure you do it outside on a solid, level surface (concrete, NOT asphalt), and have a fire extinguisher ready just in case.
Make sure the oil is heated up before you put the turkey in. and make sure there's not TOO much oil in, so that when you add the turkey, it doesn't run over.