Turkey, bad advice!

I used to cook turkey by giving it a 20 minute blast at high heat then turned down to 120 and left it in the oven all day, safely sealed in a loose coat of foil. It was always delicious and moist.

Primrose53

My turkey has been defrosting slowly in my cold garage. Looks and feels OK.

My garage was so cold the turkey wasnt defrosting after 12 hours so it was defrosted in the kitchen which is cold overnight but not as cold as the garage.

I don't remember anyone being ill but I do remember the turkey being delicious. After being cooked and carved, it lived in the pantry on the 'thrall'.
Had to ask - what's a 'thrall' kittylester?

The only time we had a truly 'off' turkey, it was a frozen turkey. I took it out of the freezer, the day before to slowly defrost in a cold utility room.

When I unwrapped the turkey on Christms Eve, I thought it was a bit greasy to the feel and had a smell, but I was young and relatively new to cooking Christmas dinners. DH said it looked and smelled OK to him, so I prepared it for cooking, wrapped it in foil and put it outside in the shed, to keep really cool. After lunch DPiL arrived and my MiL asked about the turkey, so I took her out to the she, the smell hit us as we opened the door - and there were blow flies buzzing around!

It was 2.30. The shops closed at 3.00. Thankfully the turkey had been bought in a local dairy/frozen food shop. We bundled the turkey into the boot of the car and drove the several hundred yards to the shop and took it in.

They were mortified and apologetic. They had bought in these turkeys in November from their usual supplier, but the turkeys hadn't been their usual brand and ours was the third turkey from that batch returned, all for the same reason. They had one turkey in their freezer, ordered but not yet collected. They said it it wasn't collected by 3.00pm, we could have it. It was then 2.50. We stood there for 10 minutes. They locked the doors on the dot of 3.00pm - and we had a turkey.

The next problem, it was bigger than our original one and we had to defrost it. When we got home we put it hollow end up in a bucket and every half hour boiled a kettle of water, emptied the cool water out of the bucket, poured the hot water in and concentrated on defrosting access to the internal hollow, which then also got filled with boiling water.

By 10.00pm, the turkey was defrosted and I had just enough time to prepare it before we went to Midnight Mass.

Some bacteria such as staphylococcus and bacillus cereus produce toxins that are not destroyed by cooking.
They can linger undetected and make people v ill

GrandmaKT

I don't remember anyone being ill but I do remember the turkey being delicious. After being cooked and carved, it lived in the pantry on the 'thrall'.
Had to ask - what's a 'thrall' kittylester?

A thrall is a stone shelf

I think my Mum had a marble slab in our larder.

I picked up our turkey from the farm shop on Christmas eve and it went in the pantry. The aga is a bit of a law unto itself, so I put the turkey into the top oven, breast side down, it had lemons, tangerines and fresh herbs in it's cavity and after three hours I took it out and tested it's temperature before giving it a final blast breast side up. It was ready far too soon but I put it under lots of tin foil and several thick cloths until I was ready to carve. It was moist, carved beautifully and was still hot even after being rested for nearly two hours! I always cook the stuffings separately. Delicious!

Many recipes tell you to bring the bird to room temperature before commencing cooking. The reason is that the inner temperature of the bird can be many degrees colder and this stops the thickest section not getting thoroughly cooked.