Maybe there isn’t a quality difference between a frozen and fresh turkey, but that doesn’t apply if you defrost your turkey incorrectly. Luckily, though, defrosting a turkey is easy. The two best methods for defrosting turkeys are refrigerator thawing and cold-water thawing, although you could theoretically use a microwave, if you had a gigantic microwave. (You can, however, use a sous-vide circulator to speed up the process, provided you have a big enough water bath.) Here are the rules for each, according to Butterball:
Refrigerator thawing
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- Thaw turkey breast side up, in an unopened wrapper on a tray in the fridge (40 degrees F or below).
- Allow at least one day of thawing for every 4 pounds of turkey.
- Keep turkey in original wrapper and place on tray.
- Use turkey within four days after thawing.
Cold-water thawing
- Thaw turkey breast side down, in an unopened wrapper, with enough cold water to cover your turkey completely.
- Change water every 30 minutes and if turkey cannot be completely covered, rotate every 30 minutes to keep the turkey chilled.
- You can expect 30 minutes of thawing per pound of turkey.
There is no “warm-water thawing” option. I knew someone who bathed her turkey in hot water in her bathtub on Thanksgiving. While it did defrost the bird, and she was able to cook it fine, everyone who ate it got food poisoning. When the best anyone can say about your Thanksgiving meal is, “At least no one died,” you’ve failed Thanksgiving.