If you’re going to buy a frozen bird and don’t already have it, now’s the time for a trip to the market. Buying your bird today means you’ll have time to defrost it in the least labor-intensive way, by leaving it in the fridge.
The USDA says to allow about 24 hours of thawing time for every four to five pounds your turkey weighs. That means a 16-pound bird needs about three to four days to thaw.
The agency also says to leave your turkey in its original wrapper, but I’ve got a better idea. Since your bird has to cool its heels (do turkeys have heels?) for a few days while it thaws, kill two birds with one stone and flavor the meat at the same time!
Russ Parsons described a great technique called dry-brining in Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times Food section. It’s like regular brining but without the bucket. You basically rub the meat with a mixture of salt and herbs, bag it and let it rest a few days while the flesh soaks in the flavor. Click here to read Russ’s article!
Whether or not you dry-brine, as a health writer I feel compelled to remind you to take care when slinging that raw bird around the kitchen. Bag it up tight if you’re brining. And either way, keep it refrigerated and put it on a tray big enough to catch any juices that leak out. You don’t want that possibly-bacteria-laden poultry juice all over the rest of your food. It could bring you a nasty stomach bug otherwise known as “foodborne illness.” Remember to scrub down hands, counters, and anything else the raw meat touches.
Tomorrow we’ll talk about the Saturday kitchen scrubdown.
Ready for the beginning of the holiday madness? That’s how I always think of Thanksgiving. But of course those thoughts are quickly eclipsed by visions of the delicious turkey dinner I’ll be preparing! “Preparing” is a key word here, because it takes lots of preparation to pull off the annual feast.
The human body has 206 bones, and half of all kids break at least one, or seriously injure a joint, ligament or muscle keeping those bones together. How do you keep your children on the right side of that statistic?
Treatment of scoliosis – a condition that creates a sideways curve in the spine – is a wait-and-see proposition. For the more than 100,000 kids diagnosed each year, it goes something like this: wear an embarrassing back brace daily, visit a spine specialist every four to six months for a checkup and X-rays, and when you’ve stopped growing you’ll find out whether or not you need surgery.
I don’t report every recall I hear about, but this one involves lots of products, and a potentially serious consequence.
Few diseases strike terror into the hearts of Americans the way cancer can. And a report released yesterday by the American Institute for Cancer Research suggests one way that a growing number of people can help prevent it: Maintain a healthy body weight.
