Turkey Still Frozen on Thanksgiving Morning? Here's the Method That Saves Dinner

Every year, food publications roll out their Thanksgiving coverage, dusting off older recipes and guides from the archives, publishing creative turkey and side dish reinventions that few really want, and laying out a prep timeline for what is, for many, the most ambitious dinner of the year. The timeline almost always has one dire warning: If you have a frozen turkey, do not—under any circumstances!—forget to move it to the fridge to defrost several days in advance. If there's still a turkey in your freezer on Thanksgiving morning, you might as well go buy some rotisserie chickens to take its place, because cooking it is out of the question.

Cooking a frozen turkey, they say, will result in overcooked meat on the outside and a core of cold, possibly still-frozen raw meat. According to this argument, the problem is basic thermodynamics—heat penetrates a roast from the outside in, and that's not going to happen when the heat is trying to find its way into a massive block of bird-shaped ice, especially when there's a neck and possibly giblets frozen solid in the cavity.

Except, what if that's not right? I've been wondering this ever since ThermoWorks, the precision thermometer company, published a guide and video a couple of years ago that demonstrated how to cook a whole frozen turkey all in one go. This year, I finally tried it to see for myself.

Here's the takeaway: With the right gear, you can safely and successfully cook a turkey from frozen, and the longstanding wisdom that it's impossible is outdated and incorrect. But there are some important things to know before you attempt it.

How to Cook a Turkey From Frozen, According to ThermoWorks

In their video, ThermoWorks says to first put the frozen bird, including any parts that are locked in its cavity, straight into a relatively low 325°F oven. At this point, it's too rock-solid to insert any kind of thermometer or temperature probe, but that's OK—there's not much mystery that it's frozen through. After about two hours, the turkey, they say, should be defrosted enough that you can pull the neck and any giblets out of the cavity, insert a thermometer into the deepest part of the breast to begin tracking doneness, season the turkey with salt (you can't easily get salt to stick to the turkey when it's frozen), and return it to the oven, still at 325°F, to continue cooking until done.

The logic is that in such a moderate oven, you can successfully defrost the bird without overcooking its exterior. It will take longer—about five hours, according to ThermoWorks—but you'll end up with a fully cooked, edible roast when it's done.

My Real-World Testing Results

Trying this from-frozen method has been on my to-do list for the last couple of years, and I finally saw my opportunity two weeks ago when I was selecting what to cook for an upcoming Friendsgiving celebration. The turkey hadn't been claimed, so I put my name down, then texted my friend Pedro, the host. "I have decided to make you all my guinea pigs," I wrote. "I am going to attempt to cook a turkey from frozen." A normal person would have responded with something like, "Can you please not jeopardize the dinner with one of your experiments?" But in a clear sign I've chosen my friends wisely, the texts back read only, "YES!" and "Whoa!"

In ThermoWorks' demonstration video, they are using a 12.5-pound turkey. Mine was 13.5 pounds. I arrived at my friend's house about six hours before the planned dinnertime and got it into the oven as quickly as I could. I used a ThermoWorks ambient temperature probe to confirm that my friend's oven was at the correct 325°F temp throughout.

After two hours, I pulled the bird out. My timing was tight; we had to have dinner on the table at the planned time, which made this a very realistic test run for anyone considering (or forced) to do this on Thanksgiving Day. I knew I had to get the turkey's cavity clear, or I was going to run into serious trouble. Unfortunately, my bird's cavity had not defrosted enough; I could feel the neck encased in ice, locked in place. But I was desperate, and couldn't afford to put the turkey back in to defrost further—we were set to eat, and I needed my bird to start actually cooking. Until the cavity was cleared, though, defrosting and cooking wouldn't happen fast enough.

If I'd had more flexibility with the serving time or been able to start cooking earlier, this wouldn't have been a problem. But I couldn't afford to wait, so I shoved my hand into the turkey and aggressively ripped the neck free. I did some damage to the turkey in the process—nothing disastrous, but it looked worse for wear afterward.

Then I oiled and salted the turkey all over and shoved my temperature probes into the breast in the thickest part. I used three different devices to track the turkey's temperature:

• A ThermoWorks meat probe, which sent continuous readings to the same external unit that was also tracking the oven temperature.
• A Combustion Inc. Predictive Thermometer, which has multiple thermocouples along its probe. By recording several temperature readings along the length of the probe, the Combustion Inc. software can calculate the roast's core temperature with less error (with a standard single-sensor thermometer probe, you can get misleading measurements simply by not hitting the roast's true, dead-center core, which is easy to do in an irregularly-shaped turkey).
• A ThermoWorks Thermapen One instant-read thermometer, which I could use to take additional readings, allowing me to spot-check anywhere else in the roast to confirm the data from the leave-in probes.

Before getting the neck out of the turkey's cavity, I'd been worried the bird wouldn't be ready in time for dinner. Once I got it out and put the turkey back in the oven, it cooked at a rapid clip that surprised me—it was ready to eat more than an hour before dinner. That left me plenty of time to let the turkey rest and for carryover cooking to occur (I pulled it at 150°F, well below the official 165°F guidance that guarantees a sawdusty bird, but still hot enough to be safe to eat).

When it was time to eat, I popped it back in the oven for five minutes to reheat the exterior, then carved it, and we all dug in.

The turkey turned out quite well, fully cooked with golden, roasted skin, and meat that was, for the most part, tender and decently juicy. The breast, especially at its tapered end and near the surface, was slightly overcooked and a little drier than I'd like, but still within the bounds of what I'd consider acceptable. Because the core took longer to thaw and cook, the parts that defrosted first lingered in the heat and dried out.

Conclusion

One point for ThermoWorks, zero points for everyone else who said it couldn't be done: You can indeed cook a turkey from frozen. The results may not match the absolute best turkey ever, one that's been dry-brined and roasted for a shorter time without a lengthy defrosting phase in the oven, for juicier meat throughout. But it can be done, and it can be done quite well.

It's also important to note that I cooked the turkey following ThermoWorks' instructions. While I was writing this, though, I also found a frozen turkey video from Chris Young, who founded Combustion Inc., the manufacturer of the Predictive Thermometer I used in this testing. He calls for a lower defrosting temperature of 200–225°F, which would be gentler on the meat and reduce overcooking at the most exposed parts. However, I suspect, based on my own testing, that it'd take longer than the couple of hours he estimates for all except the smallest turkeys (Young also salts the turkey much earlier, pretty much as soon as the skin is defrosted and wet with ice melt, which gives the salt more time to penetrate the meat). Once the turkey is defrosted, he bumps the oven temp up to 300°F to finish cooking.

Ultimately, the exact temperature you choose will be a balancing act between the size of your turkey (the bigger it is, the lower you should try to go to minimize overcooking of the exterior) and how much time you actually have before it's time to eat (the lower the oven temp, the earlier you should start).

There are a few essential things to get this right:

• A well-calibrated oven. This whole process and its timing hinge on your oven actually reaching the temperature you set. People are routinely surprised to learn that the actual temperature of most ovens often doesn't match the number on the dial—and can miss the mark by a considerable amount. Check your oven with a reliable thermometer (hint: those inexpensive analog oven thermometers are often wrong), calibrate it properly, and track the temperature throughout the cooking process to ensure it's working correctly.
• At least one good leave-in probe thermometer. Not only do you want to know the temperature of your oven, but you also need to know the temperature of the coldest part of the turkey. As soon as it's defrosted enough to slide a probe into it, do so, aiming to reach the deepest part of the breast without touching bone. It's a bit of a guessing game, but you can use the temperature readout to help you adjust until you've found the coldest spot.
• A good instant-read thermometer for accurate spot checking. Cooking a turkey from frozen requires knowing the turkey's core temperature at all times—it's the only way to be sure it's fully cooked, with no undercooked meat remaining deep inside. In addition to using a probe thermometer, you can use an instant-read thermometer to check the bird in a few more spots and confirm it has reached the temperature you need.
• More time than you may think. Not every turkey is the same size and shape, and not every one will defrost and cook at the same rate. While roughly five hours is a reasonable estimate for cooking a turkey from frozen, it's not a guarantee, and you don't want to be stuck with an underdone bird when it's time to eat. It's much better to give yourself an extra hour or two, or even longer if you're cooking a very large bird of around 15 or 16 pounds. A cooked turkey can hang out for a couple of hours after roasting, then go back in the oven to briefly rewarm before carving, but a raw or still-frozen turkey can't magically become fully cooked. It's much better to pad your expected cooking time than find out the hard way it's going to run long.

Step-by-Step: How to Roast a Turkey From Frozen

1. Unwrap the bird. Take the external packaging off, but don't bother trying to remove anything else—not the neck and giblets from the cavity, not a plastic pop-up turkey timer (if the bird comes with one), and not the plastic leg clamp that some turkeys come with. All of that stuff is frozen tight and can't be removed until the bird has defrosted.
2. Set it in a roasting pan, preferably on a rack. A rack helps air circulate around the whole bird, which is especially helpful when you're trying to defrost it evenly. Similarly, if you have a roasting pan with lower walls, use it, since heat will reach the bottom and sides of the bird more easily.
3. Put the turkey in the oven and set a low temperature for the defrosting phase. If you have more time, set the oven to a very low 200°F; if you have less, you can push it up towards 325°F. For a roughly 13-pound turkey, you can expect the defrosting time to take at least 2 hours, possibly up to 3, or even longer with a much bigger bird. Lower heat is gentler and risks overcooking less of the bird, but it will also be slower. You can salt the turkey generously on the outside as soon as the skin is defrosted and wet.
4. Once the turkey is defrosted, clear the cavity, then return to cooking. Once the ice has melted, you can pull the neck and anything else from the cavity, a critical step for the bird to really start cooking. You can also salt the interior of the bird at this point. Insert a quality probe thermometer into the deepest part of the breast (not touching bone) to track the core temperature from this point out. Rub the skin with oil now too, to help it brown and crisp. Return the turkey to the oven, increase the heat to 300–325°F, and roast without basting until you reach your desired core temperature. (A core temperature of 150–155°F is our preference at Serious Eats for turkey that is still juicy, not dry; it will be safe to eat as long as the turkey is at least 150°F at its coldest part for at least 4 minutes.) Spot-check the turkey with a second thermometer to confirm you have correctly measured the core temperature.
5. Rest, then carve and serve. Rest the turkey for at least 20 minutes and up to 1 hour (you can safely hold a turkey at room temperature for up to 2 hours if needed). During the rest, the turkey's internal temperature will continue to climb. Before serving, if the turkey has cooled too much, return it to the oven to reheat for 10 to 15 minutes. Then carve and serve.