Many families in the UK will roast a turkey on Christmas day. Preparing a traditional Christmas dinner challenges most people as they are cooking much larger quantities of food than normal. As a result thawing and cooking times are much longer than normally experienced. Failure to thaw or roast properly may lead to food poisoning which is one of the worst things that could happen at Christmas.
Food Poisoning Risk
It is a frightening prospect that 20% of food poisoning cases are poultry related and an estimated 10 million turkeys will be prepared for Christmas in the UK. Although most incidences of food poisoning are not reported, 4 000 Britons reported food poisoning in December 2002. Preparing a traditional Christmas dinner challenges most people as they are cooking much larger quantities of food than normal. As a result thawing and cooking times are much longer than normally experienced. Food poisoning is caused by bacteria and may arise from:
- Inadequately cooked meat due to not thawing the turkey correctly
- Inadequately cooked meat due to not roasting sufficiently
- Cross contamination of bacteria from raw meat
- Failing to chill leftovers that are retained for later use.
Use kg-based Thawing and Roasting Times
The first two problems can be solved by proper calculation of thawing and roasting times. Now that turkeys in the UK are sold in kilograms, the UK Metric Association says it makes sense to give thawing and cooking times in hours and minutes per kilogram respectively. Unfortunately many products and cookery books give guidelines in minutes per lb/450g. Since turkey weights are labelled in kilos, this means that a cook either has to convert with a calculator or re-weigh the turkey in pounds. As turkeys are often too heavy for kitchen scales it is difficult for consumers to reweigh birds unless they use bathroom scales – which is hardly hygienic! Kilogram-based thawing and cooking times are easily worked out from the turkey’s label.
Thawing Times
Thawing times depend on the temperature of the place used to thaw the bird. Thawing in a refrigerator (usually around 4°C) is recommended, however many fridges are already full around Christmas time. Alternatives are to thaw in a cool room or even room temperature.
- For thawing in a fridge at 4°C, UKMA recommends allowing 12 hours per kilo. Thus to thaw an 8 kg turkey allow 4 days.
- For thawing in a cool room at 15°C, UKMA recommends 7 hours per kilo; so 56 hours for an 8 kg turkey.
- For thawing at room temperature at 20°C, UKMA recommends 2 hours per kilo; so 16 hours for an 8 kg bird.
Obviously your fridge or room may have a different temperature to those listed so you may need to allow more or less time than quoted.
Turkey Hygiene
Other tips for preparing the turkey:
- Do not wash the turkey â?? that risks spreading bacteria! â?? roasting not washing will kill the bacteria.
- Check the inside cavity for ice crystals at the end of thawing. If ice is still there, you need more time for thawing.
- Avoid cross-contamination by keeping the raw turkey separate from other foods and dishes.
- Avoid cross-contamination by carefully washing hands, knives, boards and utensils that have been in contact with the raw bird.
Roasting Times
For roasting, UKMA recommends roasting for 40 minutes per kg at 190°C, Gas 5 – thus an 8 kg bird will take 320 minutes (5 hours 20 minutes). Fractions of kilos are also easy to calculate by allowing 10 minutes for each additional ¼ kg, so an 8.25 kg requires 5 hours 30 minutes. Check the meat is cooked by parting the skin between the leg and breast. If it is still a little pink then allow an extra 20 minutes on top of your calculated time. Juices should run clear not pink.
More Tips
Other useful tips for a perfect roast turkey on Christmas Day:
- Check your oven is large enough if you intend cooking a big bird, and buy a special turkey roasting pan.
- Turkeys are heavy so take care when lifting in and out of the oven.
- Smear the breasts with olive oil or softened butter and protect the breast with butter papers or foil. Or, work your hands between the skin and flesh of the breasts and slide in large wedges of soft Brie.
- For a tasty attractive finish sprinkle the turkey with ground paprika and crushed thyme before cooking.
- For hygiene reasons, donâ??t stuff the body cavity. Instead lift the neck flap and press your stuffing up against the wishbone.
- Never carve a bird straight from the oven. Allow it to stand for at least 20 minutes. It wonâ??t lose heat if you cover it loosely with a foil â??tentâ??. This also allows you to get your roast potatoes nice and crisp.
- Chill leftover turkey as soon as it is cold and serve within 3 days. If serving hot in a sauce or as a curry, then reheat until piping hot.
Very good advice!
I would like to suggest one minor variant on the subject of bird weights in fractions of a kilogram. 40 minutes per kg means 4 minutes per 100 g Bird weights are not typically quoted in 250 g intervals So for example the 5.8 kg turkey shown in the picture would need (5 x 40) + (8 x 4) minutes, or in other words 200 + 32 minutes (which can be rounded to 230 minutes, it’s not all that precise but the arithmetic gives a reasonable starting point).
I would like to stress though that the real safety factor lies in knowing when a bird is properly cooked from inspection. The calculated roasting times are fine (particularly in metric which makes it much easier) but they are only an approximate guide, which is essential for planning purposes. There are many other factors that vary with individual ovens so keep checking at reasonable intervals.
It is a sign of progress that although Nigella Lawson and the Food Standards Agency are debating the cooking times needed for turkeys, they are doing so in metric. See http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23428536-details/Health+warning+over+Nigella%27s+express+turkey/article.do
The ultimate turkey feast: No kilojoules shown.
‘Calories 368 18% of your guideline daily amount’
For example see:
http://www.tesco.com/todayattesco/06_03_11_tutf_01.shtml
Roast turkey with lemon, thyme and potato stuffing. Each serving contains:
‘Calories 368 18% of your guideline daily amount’
And see:
http://www.tesco.com/health/food/food_labelling/labels.page?
It’s sad that these GDA energy values are not shown in the SI unit ‘kilojoule’ (kJ).
For food 1 Calorie is the same as 1 kilocalorie; this is confusing.
It would be helpful to archive ‘Calories’ and ‘kilocalories’ and use only ‘kilojoules’.
Philip Bladon /www.simetricmatters.com
Nonetheless, I notice that Imperial (for both weight and temperature) are given in many parts of the articles.
More muddle, to be sure.
Metric good. Another nice little tip so that you can have stuffing and a well cooked bird; depending on the size of your bird stick a glass bottle in its bottom and stuff around it (open end pointing out). This allows the hot air in the oven to penetrate deep into the bird and so kill those naughty bacteria.
Have a great christmas
Considering we are talking safety here – one way of finding out the mass of the turkey, if one wants to use lbs and it’s not on the label, is to weigh oneself on an accurate set of kitchen scales with and without the bird.
The issue tends to be almost the same as new-borns (babies in lb,oz). The tradional habits are passed down each generation.
I am sure that Sean meant bathroom scales and not kitchen scales. On my bathroom scales, I can weigh myself to the nearest 0.2 kg if I use the metric units, but only to the nearest 1 lb if I use imperial units. Using my scales and the method described by Sean we could get an error of almost 1 lb which is 10% for a smallish bird!
The reason that my scales only display weights to the nearest pound is that that have four digits – two of which are taken up for the stones part of the measurement and the other two for the pounds part.
I was referring to larger birds within the context of the item and I was also referring to bathroom scales which you correctly picked up.