How long does turkey take to thaw? There’s a calculator for that
Never made a turkey before? Don't worry, science can help.
24 November, 2020
Credit: RODNAE Productions from Pexels
- This year, many people will be making a Thanksgiving dinner for the first time. It's often harder than it looks.
- Luckily, an online calculator website has one just for thawing turkey, and can explain why you need to wait so long.
- The website has other calculators as well, for needs you didn't know you had.
<p><br></p><p> This year, with the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/holidays/thanksgiving.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Center for Disease Control</a> advising Americans to stay home for Thanksgiving, many people will be faced with the prospect of preparing dinner for a smaller table or cooking a traditional Thanksgiving meal by themselves for the first time. The latter of these two issues can seem particularly daunting. </p><p>The art of preparing a turkey can seem incredibly arcane to those who haven't done it before—foul it up enough and you'll give yourself salmonella.</p><p> Luckily, science is here to help. A quick review of thermodynamics provided by the <a href="https://www.omnicalculator.com/food/turkey-thawing" target="_blank">Turkey Thawing Calculator </a>at Omni Calculator will show you not only how to thaw your turkey correctly but how math and science are all around us. </p>
How to thaw a turkey using science!
<p> The Omni Calculator <a href="https://www.omnicalculator.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">website</a> is home to calculators that can determine many things, including how <a href="https://www.omnicalculator.com/other/sunscreen" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">long you can be in the sun safely</a>,<a href="https://www.omnicalculator.com/other/sunscreen" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a>to the odds of your town having a <a href="https://www.omnicalculator.com/other/white-christmas" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">white Christmas</a>. It now has a dedicated tool for finding how long it will take you to prep your <a href="https://www.omnicalculator.com/food/turkey-thawing" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">turkey</a> in time for a socially distanced holiday. The <a href="https://www.omnicalculator.com/food/turkey-thawing" target="_blank">Turkey Thawing Calculator </a>was created by Jagiellonian University cognitive science graduate Maria Kluziak with the help of Wojciech Sas, a Ph.D. candidate in molecular magnetism and nanostructures at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Poland. </p><p>The fundamental problem is that you need to add heat to the frozen bird to unfreeze it without also encouraging the growth of bacteria. To do this, you have to put the turkey somewhere where it will heat up slowly and evenly. There is a trick, though; this can take a long time because of the amount of energy involved. Exactly how long you need to spend on it can be hard to determine if you've never done it before. </p><p>This is where practical, day-to-day science comes in. The processes of heating something are well-studied areas of thermodynamics which we use every day. <br> <br> As Kluziak tells Big Think: </p><p>"If you look closely, you'll notice how we're all surrounded by numbers. Yet most of the time people choose to go with their intuition while making day-to-day decisions. We, as scientists and experts in our own fields, are trying to build a world where people make better, more informed decisions backed by concrete science - Using physics to chill drinks, math to find out how much pizza to get, and even calculating how much groceries are enough to survive a quarantine. It works."</p>So, how do I thaw a turkey?
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDgwNjA0Ny9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NzI3NTQzN30.hr2xv0tzFU_12bA-wwKwBPv0Tou_ZcdMoF1VDlov-0k/img.png?width=980" id="07afc" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="522a8b8370fecb9dcb3bf483adea6fa5" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="2306" data-height="1248" />Credit: Omni Calculator
<p> By slowly exposing the turkey to cool air or water, it heats up to a point where the bird is above freezing but not so warm that bacteria will start multiplying. Two of the safe ways to do this stand above all others; you can thaw it in the refrigerator or the sink.<br> <br> Using a refrigerator can take days; the calculator creators suggest a day for every four pounds of bird. Doing it with cold water in the sink is faster, needing only two hours per pound, but requires that you drain and refill the sink with new, cold water every thirty minutes. The ideal temperature during thawing shouldn't exceed 39°F/4°C.</p><p>"In our thawing model, we use a scientific approach, which is based on the use of heat transfer equations," the scientists write. "Since these types of problems are, in general, very complicated, we use some approximations, which allow us to estimate the thawing time with reasonable accuracy. As a result, you can see how the average temperature of the turkey changes in time." </p><p>You can learn more about the equations and get tips on using the calculator <a href="https://www.omnicalculator.com/food/turkey-thawing" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">here</a>. You can also learn why you shouldn't use a hairdryer or a tub full of hot water to do the job. <br> <br> One of the best parts of science is that its findings are often universally applicable. If you understand why something works in one case, you can use it everywhere else. Kluziak reminds us why this might be great for cooking:<br> <br> "The rules that govern the process of thawing are roughly the same for every kind of food, what's different are the numbers that determine the more specific things like thawing time. The general ideas remain the same regardless of the food, and I would say they are pure common sense. For example, if you're defrosting food, don't do it at room temperature to avoid bacteria - this is true every time!"<strong></strong></p><p><strong> </strong>Whoever said you'd never use the science you learned in high school at home didn't understand how often we use physics—this calculator remind us that it is everywhere. So fear not, ye first-time turkey chefs! Science can help you have your main course and eat it too. </p>
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Rules are for Fools: Cook Like a Mad Scientist, Says Alton Brown
What's the most important ingredient in cooking? If you think it's love, give yourself zero pats on the back. According to Alton Brown, it's scientific enquiry.
29 September, 2016
The most important ingredient in every meal isn’t salt, or pepper, superb olive oil or the freshest produce. It’s not even love – sorry, Grandma. The most important thing you can put into your food is relentless questioning, says Good Eats chef and presenter Alton Brown. This old adage says it best: rules are made to be broken. And sometimes, unlearning is as important as learning.
<p>Having studied at the New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier, VT, Brown learnt classic, tried and true methods of cooking. But why do we so readily accept cooking methods? They work, but there are very few other fields where we’ll settle for ‘this works’ and leave the methodology unchanged for hundreds of years, if not more. Innovation has skirted cooking for a long time, so Brown started to question what he’d been taught and experimented with his own methods for the most basic conventional food wisdom, like how to sear the perfect steak, boil pasta, and make pie dough. </p>
<p>How did he do this? By approaching cooking like a scientist. In its truest form, food isn’t made up of ingredients, it’s made of particles. So he switched an apron for a lab coat and got thinking about what his food was actually made of – the muscle fibers of meat, the dense protein and starch of dried pasta, the wheat within pie crusts – and found new, better ways to cook them. </p>
<p>In this video, Brown explains how to cook each of these staple food items through the lens of scientific enquiry. It echoes the mission of Heston Blumenthal, a British chef who once tried to re-invent classic French dish 'duck à l'Orange' <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzan8opIs-s">MacGyver style</a> by stuffing an orange-flavored smoke bomb inside a duck. It didn’t go well, but you can’t fault him for innovation. Brown’s food hypotheses are a little more down to earth, and will break outdated circuits in your cooking habits for the better, without the fireworks. </p>
<p>Alton Brown's most recent book is <a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781101885710"><i>EVERYDAYCOOK: This Time It's Personal</i></a>.</p><p><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781101885710"><img height="150" src="%5Cr%5Cnhttps://s3.amazonaws.com/edge-misc-assets/Book+Covers/alton+brown.jpg" width="225"></a></p>
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