You Don’t Need to Thaw Your Thanksgiving Turkey

Cooking a traditional Thanksgiving meal is a rite of passage for most American cooks, gamified in repetition, like a tough Mario level you repeat every year until you nail it. That last castle holds the Bowser boss of a turkey—a hulking bird at least three times the size of anything we’ve cooked on easier levels. But by far the worst thing about this final boss bird is that it is invariably purchased deep frozen. Americans eat more than 40 million turkeys on Thanksgiving, and despite what you’ve heard about free-range, pasture-raised turkeys, at least 85 percent are sold frozen. So the first hurdle of Thanksgiving dinner, as a cook, is getting this bird from iced-over to pliable.

This is a source of great mental stress for our fellow Americans. Late-November Google searches for “how long to thaw a turkey” peak at over 300,000 increasingly panicked hits. There are calculators, by the pound, of when to begin the thaw-out, but the process is unreliable and prone to pre-holiday forgetfulness. I spoke with Meredith Carothers, a U.S. Department of Agriculture food safety specialist and a veteran of the USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline, and asked her to tell me some of the most hair-raising calls she’s personally taken. There was the cook who’d attempted to thaw their bird via dishwasher wash cycle. Another who’d left their turkey in a hot shower, water running. Yet another had called in a panic, saying their employer had gifted them a turkey but they’d forgotten it in their work locker over the weekend—was it still safe to cook? (It was not, but at least it was thawed.)

I myself, a food editor and James Beard Award–winning cookbook author, have retrieved a bird after three technically correct days of thawing and found it still stiff with ice. Frozen turkeys really don’t care how good of a cook you are! There’s also the risk of a leaky mess when leaving a 20-pound bird in your crisper for a week. If you are squicked out by poultry cross-contamination, the turkey thawing process is just not your happy place.

Time for some good news: All of this stress is absolutely unnecessary. Like many other aspects of our yearly American Gladiator cooking challenge, there is a better way, shocking as it may be: Don’t. Thaw. Your. Turkey. Cook it frozen. Rock solid. Straight into the oven. Not only is this so much easier, from unwrapping onward, it is—you are not hallucinating—perfectly safe and USDA-approved. And your guests never have to know.

“You can cook anything frozen,” Meredith’s colleague and fellow USDA food safety expert Archie Magoulas told me. “Here’s the general rule of thumb on frozen: You can do it, but it takes about 50 percent longer.” This is the official USDA guidance on cooking any frozen protein, in fact: It’s perfectly safe as long as you cook it at a temperature no lower than 325 degrees. (No matter what your grandmother did, it’s just not a great idea to cook a turkey at 200 degrees overnight, OK?) Just make sure it reaches a fully food-safe temperature, which—and here’s the crucial bit—takes about 50 percent longer than when thawed. Start by consulting this USDA chart on recommended cooking times by turkey weight, and add 50 percent to roughly calculate your expected time.

Did I mention it’s safe? So safe! In fact, I’d personally argue that it’s safer to cook a turkey this way than it is to deal with all the potential cross-contamination of thawing a bird and opening its juicy, splooshy bag within spraying distance of your clean counters.

Salmonella crime scenes aside, Meredith pointed out the real issue most cooks will have with giving up the thawing marathon: “It’s more about quality considerations—you can’t season until further into the process.” Yes, we’ve arrived at the big question. What does this bird taste like? No brine? Can you season it at all? I’ve cooked turkeys via this method for years, and here’s the thing, hand on my heart: A turkey cooked in this fashion will taste more or less the same as your average roasted turkey. In fact, I often find that the breast is better and doesn’t dry out, since it cooks more slowly than in a traditional thawed turkey.

If you’re a cook who has a standing commitment to dry-brining and split spatchcocking, that’s not available to you here, but then again, you’re probably not the type to land on an article about cooking your turkey from frozen.

For the rest of us, I have a confession. I just think that turkey isn’t the absolute best protein out there. In fact, I am committed to the belief that whole turkeys have only two God-given purposes: to perform as the ritualistic centerpiece of Thanksgiving dinner and, much more importantly, to become turkey stock, which is the golden elixir of life. (If you are not turning your turkey carcass into soup, please mail it to me. I’ll take it!) The quality gap between the best and the worst turkey you’ve ever had is probably pretty small, and it’s certainly smaller than the effort gap between a turkey cooked effortlessly from frozen and one that has been lovingly brined and basted in whatever elaborate method America’s Test Kitchen has deemed this year’s scientific best.

This is a long-winded way of telling you that if you make an average roasted turkey every year, you’re probably just not going to notice a difference in taste if you roast it frozen. Also, it will look supremely gorgeous, burnished and golden like a Norman Rockwell painting, thanks to that extra cooking time.

This is how to do it. Buy a frozen turkey. It can be any size (consult this chart to find the right size for your crowd). Ideally, this is a turkey that has already been brined, like many commercial turkeys are these days. Kosher turkeys will let you skip the giblet step later too, as they are sold without the gizzards packed inside.

Heat your oven to 325 degrees. Slit away the turkey netting and plastic wrapping. (I use a box knife for this.) The turkey will be iced over and make a pleasant tink-tink sound if you tap it with a spoon. Put it in a big roasting pan, ideally on a rack (but don’t sweat it if you don’t have one). Put it straight in the oven and roast it for two hours. Carefully remove it to the stovetop, and sprinkle it liberally with salt and pepper. Roast for another two hours. Meanwhile, melt ½ cup (1 stick) of butter and set aside. Cut a large lemon into quarters, and a head of garlic in half crosswise (peels stay on), and choose a handful of herb sprigs, like sage, thyme, and rosemary. When the time’s up, again on the stovetop, use a pair of tongs to tug out the giblets and neck from the body cavity (unless you bought a kosher turkey, in which case you can skip this grisly step).

Stuff your lemon, garlic, and herbs into the now empty cavity, and brush or drizzle all of the melted butter over the turkey. Put the turkey back in the oven for about one more hour, but start taking its temperature in 30 minutes. Depending on the size, it may be finished at around four and a half hours, or it could take up to six and a half. I used this method over the weekend to roast a 15-pound turkey, and it was done right at the five-hour mark.

You absolutely should not roast a turkey by this (or any other) method without a food thermometer. Meredith and Archie both wanted me to remind you of this—it’s very important that you take the temperature in three places: the thickest part of the breast, the innermost part of the wing, and the inner thigh. Make sure all have reached at least 165 degrees.

At that point, your turkey is done. Congratulations! You’ve won the game. Let the turkey rest and make your gravy. This is where you really come out ahead taking the easy route, because the extended cooking time means that your drippings will be extra browned and will make extra-delicious gravy.

I tried out this no-thaw bird on my cookbook club a few nights ago, just to see how it went over. My friend Logan took a bite and pronounced that it “just tasted like turkey.” Which, let’s be real, is all one can ever hope for from turkey, and it’s good enough for your Thanksgiving table, where everyone came for the side dishes anyway. This holiday, take the easy way out and cook confidently, even gleefully, from frozen—it’s a cheat code you can be proud of.

●     To see full cooking instructions on frozen turkey and to have every question answered, check out this recipe from the Kitchn.

●      The USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline (1-888-MPHotline, or 1-888-674-6854) is open daily and will be taking calls Thanksgiving Day from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern time.