How To Roast A Turkey

You’ve defrosted your bird and carefully seasoned and spiced it – now let’s get it in the oven. “How to roast a turkey” becomes a much simpler question when you’ve got the right kind of thermometer, but how do you know which to choose? Chef Jamie Roraback from Lincoln Culinary Institute will show you what you need to get the job done right.

Video Transcription - How to Roast a Turkey

(Video transcription provided by Speechpad)

Okay, we're going to place a turkey in the oven now. But you do have to concern yourself with how you're going to determine doneness since I did take out that pop-up timer. We have lovely things like digital thermometers.

We, as a professional, would tend to pull this turkey out at 160 degrees. Technically, you should pull it out at 165. But a turkey will continue to cook a good half-hour out of the oven, so you will easily and safely achieve 165 degrees. So 160 is the way. But there's really a better way.

What we're going to do is use a thermometer that actually stays in the actual turkey. It's called a leave-in thermometer. We're going to go down to the oven now and place it in. But the key at this point is really finding the thickest point. So what we're going to do is, we're going to take this leave-in thermometer and we're going to find the thickest point. This is near the back end of the breast. We're going to insert inward to the point where I can feel a lot of thick flesh there. That's really the thickest point. That's the point where it's going to take the longest to roast off in this particular oven.

So we're going to, again, set that leave-in thermometer. We're going to now slide it deeper into the oven. And again, that thermometer will stay there. Close it up and then we are going to now set this unit to the right temperature, so 160. At 160 degrees, this will beep and it will tell you to take it out.

For me, if I'm at home, I'll be putting up my Christmas decorations. And then I will go back to this when I hear it beeping. And you'll have something that's gonna be roasted nice. Then we can proceed to roast the turkey properly or get it done, do the gravy. And we're going to do some carving as well.

Okay, our turkey has now roasted for at least 3 hours or so. But now, it has told us it's hit 160. So we'll turn off the little timer. Even though it needs to be cooked to 165, it gives us the ability to carry-over cook. I mean, it's going to continue to cook at least 5 degrees out of the oven.

So let's take her out of the oven. We'll carefully remove the probe. And then a professional in the kitchen always says as you're walking with something just out of the oven: "Hot stuff coming through."  You don't want to bump into anybody.