![]() Thermometers and internal temperatures didn't begin showing up regularly in poultry recipes until well after World War II. When a bird is fully cooked, the drumstick moves easily in the socket, the meat isn't pink, and the chicken or turkey has all the juices inside. If the fork was warm, and the juice was clear, it was done. "My teacher would show us with a two-pronged fork that he put in the armpit of the bird, slightly inside the breast. To understand how American consumers got into this muddle, a little history is in order.Īsk any traditionally trained chef: Before thermometers were used regularly in the kitchen, poultry doneness wasn't measured in degrees: "I certainly didn't learn when a chicken or turkey was finished by using a thermometer," says Galileo's chef-owner Roberto Donna, who trained professionally at the prestigious Colombatto Hotel School of Turin in the Piedmont region of Italy. There's no way each part of the bird - not to mention the stuffing - can be wrestled into a predictable, reliable formula.Īnd yet, that's what we're expected to do. Instead of a nice solid cut of meat like a roast, where the heat can move smoothly from the outside to the inside, a turkey is a shell of bone and varying levels of tissue with a hollow central cavity, and limbs sticking out in different directions. There's another challenge to achieving those temperatures on a predictable basis: the shape of the bird, which almost guarantees that it won't be evenly cooked. The challenge of not only getting a bird thoroughly cooked, but with one part more tender than the other is turning into rocket science." But the odds of getting the two done to their respective temperatures at the same time are really tough. The goal is to minimize the cooking of the breast and to cook the leg thoroughly. The breast has next to none, so it's very tender already. The bird stands on its legs, so it has to have lots of support - lots of muscles and connective tissue. "The dark meat needs to get to a high temperature to get tender. "There's a basic dilemma," says food science writer Harold McGee. Maybe those government guidelines ensure safety but risk overcooking. So maybe that now-dry turkey breast on your dining room table passed those temperatures long ago. In poultry, the white meat cooks more quickly than the dark meat. Maybe it's practically impossible to get the turkey thigh to 180 degrees, the white meat to 170 and the stuffing to 165 all at exactly the same time. Well, maybe the USDA's golden rules about temperature are a little tarnished. You tried to follow the government's safety guidelines (and those of the National Turkey Federation and many home economists) telling you to cook the turkey until the thigh reaches 180 degrees, the breast meat is 170 degrees and the stuffing is 165 degrees. Department of Agriculture told you to, you used a meat thermometer to take the turkey's temperature. You heeded the directions on the turkey tag. The breast meat tastes like cardboard, and the leg seems a little past its prime as well.īut you followed a roasting chart. ![]() The side dishes are ready, the gravy is hot, and everyone digs in. You were there last night too, making pies and cranberry sauce and everything else you could cook in advance, so you could spend the day stuffing and basting and generally worrying about the turkey. It's Thanksgiving, and you've been in the kitchen getting ready all day.
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