[Sca-cooks] Turkey Defrosting?

[Phlip]

Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...

> Greetings!  When I was (much!) younger, my parents always defrosted a
> frozen turkey in cold water in the sink.  Now, I see on the back of my
> frozen turkey's packaging  that it says not to defrost in warm water.  Is
> the tricky word "warm" vs "cold" or shouldn't packaged turkeys be
defrosted
> in water at all?  If not, how can one get it to defrost in one day??  It
> isn't defrosting fast enough in the refrigerator.
>
> Alys Katharine

The key word is "warm". Warm has a tendency to give the bacteria on the skin
a chance to grow- and if you'd ever seen the inside of a commercial poultry
preocessing plant, you'd know why there's so much there available to grow.
If you put it in cold water, the temp is too low to encourage the rapid
bacterial growth, but the thermal properties of water will help carry enough
heat to the frozen tissue to thaw it.

The reason that's on the package, no doubt, is that someone in a hurry tried
thawing a bird in hot water and got themselves a lovely dose of food
poisoning and tried to sue a turkey producer. There really isn't much
difference in the time it takes to thaw in hot vs cold, but the safety issue
is very important- unless, like Cadoc's inlaws, you look forward to your
annual case of stomach flu ;-)

Saint Phlip,
CoD

"When in doubt, heat it up and hit it with a hammer."
 Blacksmith's credo.

 If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably not a
cat.

Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....



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