Food Safety Experts Discourage Cooking Stuffing Inside of Turkey

As many of us scurrying around making Thanksgiving dinner preparations today and tomorrow, there are a probably traditional dishes that may have been handed down from generation to generation that will grace your table tomorrow. However, USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline's Marianne Gravely encourages cooks not to cook their stuffing inside of their turkey.

Gravely: "Cook the stuffing outside of the turkey. Cook it in a cassolule dish. You can add flavor by adding some broth from cooking the giblets or some of the drippings from the turkey. You still want to cook it to 165 — but it is not going to have to cook nearly as long as it does inside of the turkey. And the turkey won't have to be cooked an extra time to make sure that the stuffing is safe."

Gravely says she often gets caller who refuse to change their stuffing cooking tradition. In that case, she says

Gravely: "We're here to make sure that they do it the safest way possible and that means taking the temperature of the stuffing to make sure that it has reached a safe temperature which means 165."

If you have cooking questions you can call the Meat and Poultry Hotline number which is 1-888-MPHOTLINE or if you prefer you can go online to askkaren.gov