Thanksgiving is fast approaching and that means you have a little anxiety if you host the holiday dinner this year.
This anxiety was dubbed “turkey trauma” through the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line when it began in 1981. It opens every year for the very important turkey festivals in November and December. In keeping with the zeitgeist, you can get answers to your questions via SMS and even asking Alexa.
This time of year is nostalgic for me, as my first assignment was to handle PR for Butterball Turkey Talk-Line and that made me a diehard Thanksgiving fan. It’s my favorite holiday and to this day, my friends and family circle start texting. In mid-November he asked me this vital inquiry on how to buy a turkey and, more specifically, do they buy a new turkey or a frozen turkey?
When I answer the question again instead of frozen, I start by saying that I answer based on what can be obtained at your local supermarket or online. This answer is not about a local farm or a specialized butcher shop and you want to take into account what you have bought and liked in the past.
Since Thanksgiving is all about culture, I’m convinced you want to stick to culture. So if your culture is a new turkey, stick to it. And if your culture is to buy a frozen turkey and thaw it in the refrigerator for days before Thanksgiving, stick to it. If you deviate from what you’ve done and gotten angry and associate yourself with the big day, it may not be the same. For most people, it is a sentimental party full of memories and hence the emotional trauma of the turkey.
So what kind of turkey do you buy? In general, I’m a fan of frozen turkeys because they freeze right after processing. This means that, like frozen vegetables, they are frozen and preserved at their peak. However, I recently tried, for the first time, a very cold turkey. Choose Diestel Family Ranch and is the most productive of both worlds.
Deeply cooled or super-cooled foods, such as turkey, mean they are cooled just before freezing, so they technically keep the bird “fresh. “significant degrees of ice crystal expansion that can cause structural damage,” according to New Food magazine, a multimedia resource for the global food and beverage industry.
Anyone who has thawed a frozen turkey knows that when you thaw it in the refrigerator, you want to thaw it on a baking sheet or tray because many of those frozen ice crystals (which were the turkey’s herbal juice before thawing) thaw and gather in the bin. Juices that turn into ice are never reabsorbed through the bird.
I thawed the deeply cooled Diestel turkey in my refrigerator and grilled it, the cleanest and driest bird I’ve ever cooked. There were no extra juices on the tray or in the original packaging after it was in my fridge for two days.
Heidi Diestel is part of the fourth-generation team that runs Diestel Family Ranch and Array. [ ] Carefully breeds a variety of turkeys, adding biological turkeys and regenerative turkeys.
Heidi Diestel, a circle of fourth-generation farming relatives, told me they also cool deeply for convenience. “At Diestel, we send a cold turkey instead of a frozen turkey to make the holidays a little less difficult for people. It will require consumers to thaw in their refrigerator at home for several days, which is inconvenient, time-consuming, and takes up a lot of space in the refrigerator. A well-cooled turkey will be comfortable and able to cook [more] quickly, which will help ensure success and even a delicious roast and dinner. “
The merit of a new turkey is that you don’t have to thaw it. When you buy a new turkey that hasn’t been wonderful or cooled deeply, it can be roasted right away. That’s the great merit I see in that. Some other people claim that it is more tender and juicy, but in my experience, this component is basically based on cooking and perhaps brine.
Once you have made the decision to buy a fresh, frozen or refrigerated bird, the next query is what length to buy. It will feed about 7-8 more people with leftovers. If you have a crowd of 10 or more people and need leftovers, buy two smaller turkeys (14 to 16 pounds) or a full turkey and turkey skirt. My reasoning is that a giant turkey (20 to 28 pounds) takes time to thaw and cook, and is giant and unwieldy.
Once you perceive what you want, it’s time to place your order. Don’t wait until the last minute or you could end up with that 24-pound turkey or no turkey.
Depending on when you buy your turkey, you’ll put it in your refrigerator or freezer. The general thawing rule is that it takes about 24 hours for every four pounds of frozen turkey, which means that a 12- to 14- A pound of turkey takes 3 more days to thaw and, at that point, ice crystals may still remain in the cavity.
If your turkey is still frozen on Thanksgiving morning, thaw it with bloodless running water for 2-4. . . [ ] hours and will thaw quickly.
If you’re behind schedule and don’t have 3-4 days to thaw your turkey in the refrigerator, you can thaw it, in its packaging, in the sink, or in the tub of bloodless running water. This is a defrosting approach that takes about 25% of the time to defrost in the refrigerator.
Diestel turkeys are sold nationwide in some retail stores or you can buy them directly on their website. Each turkey that comes directly from them is shipped deeply refrigerated in a well-insulated box that is 99% compostable. The company recommends hitting your order by November 17 to get your bird in time for the holidays. And, if you like smoked turkeys, they also sell fully cooked ready-to-eat smoked turkeys that are smoked in an expired way in smokers with walnuts or walnuts. wood.