Butterball is ready to help you cook that Thanksgiving turkey

Less than two weeks out from Thanksgiving, I imagine some of you guys may be playing host and getting ready to make a whole lot of food. And the centerpiece of a Thanksgiving feast, that turkey, can sometimes be a little bit tricky. I want to go ahead and bring in Jessica here, joining us from the Butterball Turkey Talk Line. Jessica, thank you so much for taking some time to chat with us here on Fox 6 Now. Thanks for having me. So happy to be here. I guess for starters, talk to me about this Turkey Talk line that Butterball offers. It's really just a helping hand and a resource for us to use. Absolutely. Our Butterball Turkey Talk Line, we're really excited to be celebrating 45 years of Talking Turkey with holiday hosts. We're here to support them with all of their turkey questions, to help in tricky moments on Thanksgiving Day. And all throughout the season, we're open from November 2nd to December 24th. And so we're here just to help them with anything they might need related to turkey. I love that because yeah, sometimes this bird is just a little bit intimidating. So Jessica, for anybody watching right now, maybe going to be attempting to make this for the first time this holiday season, what's your go-to advice? Yeah. So your best friend on Thanksgiving day is a meat thermometer. So if you are going to be cooking a turkey, make sure that you have a thermometer so you can check it for doneness. We recommend cooking it at 325 degrees, simply brushing it with a little bit of oil and putting in the oven. It's usually a range based on the weight that you have. And what you're looking for is 170 degrees in the deepest part of the breast and the deepest part of the the thigh without touching bone. And if you should stuff. Your turkey, 165 degrees in the center of the stuffing. And I know I was reading some of your kind of favorite go-to tips and you were saying maybe skip the butter on the coating of the turkey. Save that for your mashed potatoes. Yeah, absolutely. I think that we can just save our butter dollars for mashed potatoes and for pie crusts because, I mean, some people like to put butter on their turkey. It's just going to end up in the bottom of the pan. It's going to come off of the skin and go into the bottom of the pan. It's not really going to penetrate the meat very much, so you'll just get more bang for your buck if you use the butter in a little bit of a different way. You'll still get that nice brown turkey, that nice golden color, if you just use a little oil. Yeah, absolutely. That's so smart. Okay. Let's say we're going to the store. We're trying to figure out what size turkey we need. Any advice there to make sure we don't end up with too much leftovers? Sure. Is there such thing as too much leftovers? I think that when, well, Butterball recommends about one and a half to two pounds per person, if you'd like a little bit of leftovers. So that's inclusive of the bones. But if you want a little bit more meat or a little bit more white meat, we, Butterball's portfolios, it has a lot of different options, something for everyone. And so we do have bone-in breasts, boneless breast roasts. So you can add more meat on without Without having to get too large of a turkey. But when you do have leftovers, it's really the most economical part of the meal because you can make so many other things with it after Thanksgiving. Well, you know, I'm going to ask you now then any creative tips for how we can use those leftovers after Thanksgiving. Sure. We have lots of recipes at butterball.com for leftovers. My favorite way is to like throw it in a quesadilla with some black beans and some cheese. But there's lots of things that you can do that are, you can make a sandwich out of the turkey and then take the stuffing and put it in your waffle maker and make little stuffing sandwiches. So there's, there really are so many options and we have lots at butterball.com for you to, for you to check out. Yeah, that That sounds delicious. I know this is your sixth. Season participating here at Talkin' Turkey with the Butterball Turkey Talk line. What do you love about this gig that keeps you coming back? Well, we just really are helping people. And while in the moment, it's not it's really high stakes for the people that are cooking turkey for their family. Like for us, it's. It really is just a great, a great thing to do, to be able to be there, to answer the phone when someone needs our help. And then we have the information. We can help you do what you need done or figure out how to do what you need done for your family. Or we can give you guidance on on how to do things safely, which is really important. Thawing turkey is our number one question on the talk line. And people want to thaw their turkeys in lots of different ways that are not food safe. And so we're here to help guide you to food safety with your butterball turkey. Right. We don't want anyone to go home sick from our Thanksgiving feast. That would be the biggest nightmare. So to your point there, walk us through the safest way to thaw our turkeys. We're already learning so much from you, Jessica. Sure. There's two safe ways to thaw a turkey. The first is in the packaging on a tray in the refrigerator. Put some paper towels underneath it just in case there's a pinhole and it might leak. But it's 24 hours for every four pounds. So a 16-pound turkey will take approximately four days to thaw in the refrigerator. Once it's fully thawed, you have four days to cook it. But we also celebrate National Thawing Day the Thursday before Thanksgiving. So no matter what size turkey you have, if you just take it out of the freezer and put it in the refrigerator the Thursday before Thanksgiving, it'll be thawed and ready to cook on Thanksgiving Day. The second way is in cold water. So you're in a hurry. You can take the turkey in the packaging, submerge it fully in cold tap water, breast side down, and then Change that water every 30 minutes, and you'll be doing that 30 minutes per pound. So a 16-pound turkey would take eight hours to cold water thaw, but that's how you get from starting the day with a frozen turkey and cooking a turkey in the same day. But in your area, we also have the cook from frozen whole turkey. So if you find yourself in a pinch and you can't thaw your turkey, you can go to Butterball.com and check our product locator and find what retailer might be carrying the cook from frozen in your area. That is for me. That's for the procrastinators out there. We don't have to worry about the thaw step. We're just going to cook it from frozen. Love that that's an offering. It's kind of cool to think about, Jessica, you almost play a role in probably so many people's Thanksgiving or maybe Christmas dinners, Christmas Eve dinners. You're offering this helping hand to so many different family and friends in these gatherings. How does that feel for you It feels really good to me and to everyone that works on the talk line. We have almost 60 of us now are working on the turkey talk line and so we are all culinary professionals, registered dietitians, nutritionists, food scientists, chefs and we just get a lot of joy from from doing this work and we feel so lucky and to celebrate 45 years of doing it. And remind us, how long is the Turkey Talk line available from Butterball? I know we've got some time to get through the holidays. Yeah, so we're here until December 24th. But on Thanksgiving Day, we're here from 6 to 6. So 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Central Standard Time on Thanksgiving Day. All of us will be working that day. I imagine that a lot of phone calls will be made that day and a lot of people are going to be so thankful for your help and all that advice. Jessica, really appreciate you taking a few minutes to join us here on Fox 6 Now as we get ready for the holidays.