Taking turkey's temperature
I have more thermometers than I care to admit. But where do I put the darn things? Yes, I know about the meatiest part of the thigh, but can someone point me to a picture of what that means? Is the thermometer vertical or horizontal? Angled? Between breast and leg? In front or behind the knee? Seriously, just a picture. That's all I need.
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9 Comments:
I temp Alton Brown's way - 161 in the breast. Period. End of (nerdy) story. It's never failed.
therealchiffonade at 4:40PM on 10/06/09
I've seen people stick the thermometer in all sorts of spots on a bird. I always go for the fattest part of the breast, far enough in that it's taking a temp of meat and not in the body cavity/hitting bone.
gingercookiewithlime at 5:18PM on 10/06/09
Angles, away from bones into the meatiest portion of the breast.
CJ McD at 6:16PM on 10/06/09
i tend to go to the thigh area.... that takes the longest time to cook.... but i've got to try alton/chiff's way next time.
pooch at 10:48PM on 10/06/09
I was watching an old ep of Jaime Oliver the other day, the one where he cooks in that odd apartment and invites people over? At any rate, he was roasting a whole chicken and he cut into (but not through) the leg and thigh meat at about one inch intervals, arguing that b/c these cook the slowest, scoring it thusly would mean that the cooking time would be equal to the breast and that the meat would get sort of 'fall off the bone and sweet'.
I'm very curious, has anyone tried it? Doesn't it dry out the dark meat?
BananaMonkey at 10:01AM on 10/07/09
This is one method....
http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/turkey.therm.2.jpg
2qrs at 3:43PM on 10/07/09
@2qrs - thanks. I don't know if @larkspurkc will find it helpful, but I sure did. I just bought an electronic thermometer (always cooked by the pound) and will be using it this weekend. Now, is there a site which lists the various temperatures for meat - I thought there would be a sheet in my meat thermometer but there wasn't.
bareneed at 6:11PM on 10/07/09
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Fact_Sheets/index.asp
Download the "kitchen companion" PDF....the temp charts start on pdf page 11....but...I find the whole document, as well as some of the other resources on that page, to be very helpful....
2qrs at 6:28PM on 10/07/09
Thanks, 2qrs! I also finally found one at my old friend google.
http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/cooking-tips-techniques/cooking/take-turkeys-temperature-00000000002297/
larkspurKC at 12:39PM on 10/08/09