Danilo Alfaro has published more than 800 recipes and tutorials focused on naked turkey complicated culinary techniques approachable to home cooks. If so, take a deep breath.
Everything is going to be fine. It is possible to cook a turkey from a frozen state—yes, really! And not only will it be thoroughly cooked, but it’ll also be beautifully browned, moist, and delicious. If you want to skip to the part where we tell you what to do, scroll down to where it says “how to cook a frozen turkey. You can come back and read the rest later, once the bird is in the oven and you’re drinking a glass of wine.
Every year we encourage readers to plan ahead to allow adequate time for their frozen turkey to defrost. Judging by how popular the article is, it’s a topic that a lot of readers wonder about. Unfortunately, many of those readers seem to be finding the piece on Thanksgiving morning, at which point it’s too late to use any of the methods the article describes. That’s because the only safe way to properly defrost a frozen turkey is in the refrigerator, which, depending on how big your turkey is, can actually take several days—up to five days for a 20-pound bird.
If you try to speed up the process or use a technique that isn’t safe, you risk turning your turkey into a bacteria bomb that could end up making a lot of people sick. With that in mind, if you wake up Thanksgiving morning and your turkey is a solidly frozen boulder, you might start thinking you’re going to have to order take-out, or maybe reschedule Thanksgiving for Saturday. Is It Safe to Cook a Frozen Turkey? The good news is, you CAN cook a turkey that’s still frozen. In fact, a study by an MIT-educated food safety consultant describes how it can be done in accordance with the FDA Food Code. Indeed, from a certain standpoint, it’s a safer method, since a frozen turkey won’t drip salmonella-laden juices all over your sink and countertop. Moreover, the breast, which is the most prone to overcooking and drying out, cooks more slowly when it starts off frozen, so your white meat may turn out juicier than usual.
On the other hand, you won’t be able to brine the turkey, or season it with your famous spice rub. Remember though, and this is important: At this point, you are looking to salvage your Thanksgiving. You’ll have a turkey, and it’ll be fully cooked. It will probably not win turkey of the year. After all, anyone can cook a turkey when nothing goes wrong. It’s overcoming adversity that makes what you’re about to accomplish so special. Cooking a frozen turkey will take around 50 percent longer than cooking one that’s already been thawed.
So you’ll want to break out the snacks to make sure folks don’t start eating the furniture. You’ll want to modify the cooking times if your turkey weighs less or more than that. But as a rough guide, figure 1. 5 times whatever your cooking time would’ve been. Second, preheat your oven to 325 F. You want a very low temperature so that the outside of the turkey doesn’t burn before the inside has cooked. Line a roasting pan with foil, and put a roasting rack in it.
This will ensure that the turkey stays above any liquid that may drain out, which would cause it to steam rather than roast. And it will cook more evenly on a shallow pan than one with high sides. You may have better luck setting the wrapped turkey onto the rack and then peeling the wrapper off the turkey, rather than trying to handle a naked, frozen turkey. Just make certain that you’ve removed all of the wrappers.
Don’t Forget the Bag of Giblets! Obviously, with the turkey frozen solid, you won’t be able to pull the bag of giblets out of the cavity. Don’t worry about it right now. Set the turkey on the rack and put it in the oven.
Do not open the door of the oven for two hours. After two hours, you should be able to work your meat thermometer into the deepest part of the thigh. Once you have the probe into the thigh, brush the skin with melted butter, season with salt and pepper and return it to the oven for another hour. By then you should be able to get the bag of giblets out. Fortunately these days it seems like they come wrapped in paper rather than plastic, but either way, you definitely don’t want to leave it in there. At the three-hour mark, the thigh reading should be around 140 F, but it depends on whether you got the thermometer all the way in or not.