Thanksgiving Preparations - The Perfect Time and Temp for a Perfect Turkey

The biggest cooking day of the year is ahead and no one wants to get to the big day and find out they had a bad temperature probe and come up with either an undercooked or overcooked Turkey. Or another scenario, which we've seen happen frequently, the oven, roaster or smoker is set to one temperature, but is really another and what should have taken four hours is into the fifth.

The time is now to test your probes. There are two convenient methods of testing using either ice water or boiling water. Ice water the temperature readings should be 32 Fahrenheit, but you have to make sure you get the right density of water and ice and get the probes placed correctly. To make it simple, we use a styrofoam coffee cup with a lid, fill it up with ice and water, put the lid on, then insert the probes into the opening on the lid. Boiling water is dependent on your elevation. At 0 it should be around 212 Fahrenheit, 1000 feet 210, 2000 feet 208, etc. If you have more than 1 probe and test them all together, you should get a good feel if they are all reading about the same in boiling water.

It's also a good idea to test your oven, roaster or smoker with probes. There may even be hot and cold spots depending on the rack or position. We take and place probes on the different racks using probe clips, or a ball of aluminum foil with the probe put through it, or even a potato pierced through, set the oven and then use our graphing in the app to see how well the performance is in the oven to learn our oven. If your oven is set at 350 but the graphing shows that it is closer to 300, you know to either allow more time, or set the oven higher.

Another option is deep frying your Turkey. Use the Tappecue Long Probe to know the precise temperature of your oil when frying.

Having the oil too hot will cook the outside faster than the inside of the turkey, leaving the skin burnt and inedible, between 300-350°F... 325°F is ideal. Make sure not to put a frozen Turkey in hot oil or fill the oil in the pot too high to where it overflows... both can be catastrophic.

To help our customers prepare for the big day, we are having a big discount on probes through Thanksgiving at 50% off. If you don't have a Tappecue, the build your own bundle where you purchase the unit and then the probes separately, will get you a very big discount. Tappecue is the only single unit on the market with such a highly diverse probe set. The versatility of the Tappecue means you can use it for really any type of cooking: roasting, smoking, deep frying, broiling, or any type of long processing of foods and drinks like sous vide, brewing or wine-making