The Brits and their piping hot. The Canadians and their 185F.
No one knows where this advice comes from, yet every holiday, the soundbites are trotted out like a recurring nightmare. It’s like a song by Journey or Styx or Bryan Adams – Don’t Stop Believing, I’m Sailing Away, Summer of ’69 — it keeps playing and it’s horrible.
The UK Food Standards Agency came out with a computer screen saver yesterday that I couldn’t get to work, and just as well – it says “cook your turkey properly until the juices run clear.”
Color is a lousy indicator: use a digital tip-sensitive thermometer and stick it in.
Nevertheless, the communication experts at the Food Standards Agency say:
“These are the three main ways to tell if poultry is cooked:
* the meat should be piping hot all the way through
* when you cut into the thickest part of the meat, none of the meat should be pink
* if juices run out when you pierce the turkey, or when you press the thigh, they should be clear.”
Piping hot reminds me of Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins. Provide some scientific validation for these statements. And is it really so hard to recommend using a thermometer?
In Canada, where the laws of physics are somehow different, Health Canada continues to recommend cooking all the crap out of the bird until 185F. The U.S. changed its advice to 165F years ago. When asked why, Canadian government types won’t talk. It’s a secret. But then again, Canada has no Parliament. It goes away. Just keep on believing.
“Her mother decided that there was no room in the fridge, so she did the next best thing, throwing the turkey into the swimming pool to thaw. It wasn’t heated, so the water was in the low 60s. The good news is that we convinced mom to rescue the bird from the pool. The bad news — we did not get a picture of the floating turkey.”
Here’s Steve in action with some visiting Russian team. As Chapman correctly notes, this photo perfectly exhibits Naylor:
Amy and I usually host a Thanksgiving dinner for the Manhattan (Kansas) stay-at-homes. With Amy almost 40 weeks pregnant and me driving to the Kansas City airport to pick up my youngest, Courtlynn, we kept things simple.
Over the past few days, I’ve seen lots of advice to ensure a perfectly cooked (and foodsafe) thanksgiving turkey, but what if you’ve applied the cooking process a little too thoroughly? 
Dave Grohl, right, said, “Did someone offend the smores guy cause I think he spit on mine.”.jpg)
The 150F recommendation is based on a 6-7 log reduction of salmonella in stuffing at 140F for 12.7 min (pathogen destruction is time/temperature, and it will take that long to take the stuffing from 140-150. Pete Snyder’s .jpg)
Michéle writes, as an educator, it’s always interesting to discover what people in my community know (or don’t know) about food safety. And what their kids pick up from the kitchen.
By Seth: You cook a turkey for 10 minutes. Then wait for ten minutes. Then cook the turkey at 2500 degrees.
By: Dylan — First you pull off the feathers. Next you clean it. Third, you put some seasoning on it. Next, you put a thermometer in. Fifth, you put it in a pan. Sixth, you put it in the stove. Next, you put it to 95 degrees. Next, you cook the turkey for sixty minutes. 
But, there’s still work to be done, and every year, it’s the same issue. We say it’s
Pete Snyder at the Hospitality Institute of Technology and Management in St. Paul, Minnesota, has a summary available demonstrating the safety of thawing poultry at room temperature at 
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