The Best Turkey Cooking Temperature

If you have ever been to someone's house when they prepared you a fabulous thanksgiving dinner and you just did not like the turkey taste, there may be one very good reason why. A lot of times, it is because they simply did not use a lot of flavoring according to your specific taste buds or even more times then not, it is because of the dryness of the turkey. A dry turkey can happen several ways such as not basting it properly and as often as one should in order to keep the juices flowing.

Another reason is that someone cooked the bird at too high of a temperature and then kept it in there for the recommended cook time or even longer. This would certainly be the cause the turkey to be dry because the proper turkey cooking temperature was not followed. When the proper turkey cooking temperature is not followed, you are going to end up with one of two cases. The first scenario is that the turkey ending up being over cooked because the temperature was too high which means it ended up dry. And the second is that the turkey cooking temperature was set too low which means it was not fully cooked at all.

How to Get It Right

In order to make sure that the turkey cooking temperature is correct, you will want to strictly follow the instructions on the oven. The general recommendation for the proper turkey cooking temperature is three hundred and twenty five degrees. And once you have it set, try to make sure all little children are away from the stove as we all know how they love playing with knobs and such. Also, try to refrain from opening the open door too often unless it is time to baste because every time you open the door, the built up temperature is lost and it has to build itself up again.

You are also going to want to watch the directions carefully in order to not remove it too early or too late. But something important that you will want to keep in mind is that all ovens are different so when it is time to remove the turkey, you will want to make sure to stick a thermometer into the turkey. If the proper turkey cooking temperature was used and it was in there long enough, the temperature of the inside of the turkey should read at least one hundred and sixty five degrees. Eating a turkey of anything less could mean getting sick in a very bad way such as food poisoning and no one wants to go through that.