Oh no! Your turkey isn’t thawed yet? (It’s OK)

For the next couple days the phone number for the Butterball Turkey-Talk line will be ringing nonstop There s a lot of people especially the amateurs who don t cook a lot who are going to be nervous about messing up the Thanksgiving turkey Related stories What s open what s closed for Thanksgiving in the DC region Thanksgiving journey forecasts point to typically busy airports roads and trains Anything with raisins What not to bring to this week s Thanksgiving feast Particular of them are worried they messed it up already It s understandable too Life is inevitably crazy these days right Work is nonstop and then the kids on top of that Plus if you re hosting someone in your family is apparently adding to your stress levels All the hustle and bustle of life made it easy to forget to pull your turkey out to thaw Believe it or not it happens to a lot of people But no matter how hard you hope putting it in the refrigerator now won t get it thawed in time for dinner you need to allot a full day for every four pounds of turkey you thaw by putting the frozen bird in the fridge A lot of our calls do revolve around thawing It s our No question we get here at the Butterball Turkey Talk Line Sue Smith one of the experts who has been taking calls for Butterball for years explained WTOP Luckily it s an easy fix You re going to want to soak it in cold water It s going to be your quickest safest way to get this turkey defrosted in time for Thanksgiving Day she mentioned Her advice is to just fill up the kitchen sink It takes minutes per pound to get it thawed in this water she stated You re going to change that water every minutes and that s going to be the quickest way to do it Experts like Smith are available to talk over the phone or online through email chat boxes and text message You can also find video tutorials at the Butterball website And during her years she s heard lots of crazy stories from people who did things that are way dumber than anything you would do There was a dad with a to-do list He had to thaw the turkey he had to give the twin boys a bath you know he had his to-do list there and he gave me a call she recalled Smith noted she heard all this laughter and chaos in the background as he was thawing the turkey with his twin boys He just wished to know how long it would take And I have twin boys so I could see where it d be pretty fun for those boys she reported But she had to explain that the turkey needed to stay in its own cold water bath Don t put it in with your kids Don t put it in a hot tub We ve heard that before she reported Even crazier Someone had it wrapped up in their heating blankets and just required to know about how long that would take if it was on the high setting versus the low setting she remembered So people do get creative here Once you have it in the oven you want to use a meat thermometer to make sure the center of the turkey breast and thighs each hit degrees Fahrenheit I inevitably recommend too about two thirds of the way through once your turkey starts getting a nice golden-brown color lightly shield it with various oil Smith reported That will prevent the breast from getting overdone while you re waiting for that side meat to get to temperature Source