Tips For Cooking Thanksgiving Turkey From Reading Terminal Market Pro
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Turkey is the centerpiece of a lot of peoples' menus on Thanksgiving. But if you cook it wrong, it could be hazardous to your health. So here are a few tips for cooking the perfect turkey.
Mack Ozuna, manager at Original Turkey at Reading Terminal Market, has a mantra to cooking turkey.
"Slow and low," he said. "Put water on there, make sure to cover the breast, keep the leg and thigh out, because the leg and thigh cooks at a higher temperature and -- if it flies, 165!"
He says you want to re-heat a cooked turkey for about two hours but....
"Starting from scratch, I would say three hours, and then after the three hours, probe it and make sure it's at 165 degrees. If it's not, check it every half hour," Ozuna said. "It could look cooked and it could be raw. I'm not going to tell you to go by the eye; just invest in a probe, they're pretty cheap."
And for safety reasons, Ozuna says don't put stuffing inside a raw turkey.
"You have blood from turkey leaking through it," he said, "so I would cook it separate."