I'm an adamant anti stuffer. I'm not overly paranoid, in general, with food safety. Normally cautious though. With poultry, however, you need to be very careful. And most agree that by the time it would take your stuffing to get to a safe temperature, the bird will be thoroughly dry. Cook the stuffing separately and add the turkey dripping in if you'd like.
Not sure about thawing but I am a big supporter of stuffing the bird. This makes the stuffing so much better! If you have vegetarians coming and your stuffing is veggie, you can keep some external and cook it in muffin tins.
yep, thawing it in a large bucket in the bath tub with a slow stream of cold water is the way to go. stuffing a turkey is usually not recommended because the inside of the bird cooks differently. It's usually best to cook your stuffing and turkey separately then stuff the bird during the last 30 minutes of cooking to ensure that everything is cooked to its proper temperature and that the stuffing isn't overcooked.
this can be tremendously wasteful of water, but if you run it under cold (NOT hot or warm!!!) water, it will thaw in several hours, maybe between 7 and 10. you can fill a sink with water and change it every half hour or so, but it will take longer. also make sure the turkey is submerged, which might require having some sort of weight on it.
Thank you. By tomorrow it will have been in the fridge for 36 hours so hopefully that will help shorten the time. So much for the great dry brining method I'm now reading about. Happy Thanksgiving!
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