The 2:30am Christmas Turkey

Posted by: bob on Tuesday December 27th 2011

We put off our holiday dinner shopping until very last minute – as in I was at the grocer buying it christmas eve as the store was closing for the holiday. We wanted chicken but I could not find any chickens, so I got a turkey. When I got home I put it in the fridge so that it would thaw out.

It did not thaw out though, when I woke up the next morning my girlfriend was like “I guess I forgot to tell you to leave it out” and I was like “oops” – Apparently turkeys take two days to thaw out under normal circumstances. It was an all day affair, but I managed to get it thawed out from 10am to 6:30pm floating it in hot water, changing the water every hour.

According to howstuffworks.com, a frozen turkey takes 5 hours to cook at 325F. Assuming that was true, I was expecting this thawed turkey to be ready by 11pm at the latest.

However they were quite wrong. This turkey which was put in the oven at 7:20pm was not ready until 2:30am. But damn was it tastey. We shoved it full with garlic, onion, oranges, and lemon, then cooked potatoes and carrots around it.