Matt Abdoo is the Executive Chef & Partner of Pig Beach BBQ restaurants.
Today, Matt is a frequent guest chef on NBC’s TODAY, and often appears as a celebrity guest or judge on Food Network programs such as America’s Beat Bobby Flay, The Kitchen, Battle of the Brothers, Kitchen Crash, and more. Matt has also appeared on the Dr. Oz Show and DirecTV’s Fantasy Zone. Matt is a co-author of the Pig Beach BBQ Cookbook: Smoked, Grilled, Roasted, and Sauced. Matt is a close friend of the turkey industry, and offered up some of his personal advice on how to make your Thanksgiving celebration go off without a hitch!
🧊 Brine your bird the night before in a cooler with ice! It’s a great way to add tons of moisture and flavor to your turkey without taking up precious refrigerator space. I like a brine that is as simple as water, salt, sugar, thyme, bay leaf, black peppercorn, and citrus 🍋.
🌡️ Make sure to have a digital instant-read thermometer on hand. The best way to cook the perfect turkey is to know for sure when it is done! It should read 165 degrees internal when you are done.
🔪 Break down your turkey before cooking! Separate the legs and thighs from the breast. Taking the breast meat off the cage while keeping the skin on, and breaking down the legs and thighs to cook separately, will give you a much better opportunity to cook them appropriately. This way you can guarantee that you won’t have dry turkey breast while having undercooked leg and thigh meat!
🧈 Don’t forget the butter! Whether you are cooking the turkey whole or breaking it down as I suggest, generously smear the entire bird with lots of room temperature butter. Not only does the butter provide amazing flavor and moisture, it will also help your turkey develop a beautiful golden brown color! Don’t forget to stuff some butter under the skin too, and season with salt and pepper! 🧂
🥄 Baste with haste! Basting the turkey is a time-honored tradition, but many people are doing it wrong. When it comes time to baste, I suggest pulling the entire roasting pan out of the oven and placing it on the stovetop, then quickly shutting the door. This will prevent the oven from losing valuable heat and help speed up the cooking process. Also, once the turkey is on the stovetop, it gives you a better visual to baste the turkey with the fat drippings. When you baste the turkey, you want to be basting with oil, not liquid, to enhance the browning of the skin! 🍗
❄️ Frozen? Don’t fret! If your turkey hasn’t had time to fully defrost, don’t panic! You can absolutely cook a partially frozen turkey, but you will miss out on the advantages of brining or breaking it down to cook. If this happens, I suggest getting one of those turkey roasting bags to cook your turkey in and plan on it taking an extra hour or two to cook. The bags will help with an even cooking process and prevent the outside from drying out while the inside stays frozen. Throw a bunch of aromatics in the bag like thyme, garlic, onions, and lemons to help add some extra flavor, and add a few tablespoons of flour to help absorb the drippings and have a gravy ready to go. Plus, the cleanup is super simple! 🧹 Just make sure it gets to that magic 165 degrees internal temperature.
📏 Plan your cook based on these rough estimated turkey cooking times by weight so you don’t fall behind:
- 8–12 pounds: 3 hours ⏱️
- 12–14 pounds: 3 ½ hours ⏱️
- 14–18 pounds: 4 ½ hours ⏱️
- 18–20 pounds: 5 hours ⏱️
🏡 Make what you are capable of! If your kitchen is too small, and you don’t have the extra refrigerators in the basement or the garage like your parents do, there is no shame in making what you can and buying what you can’t! Thanksgiving should be more focused on spending quality time with your family, friends, and loved ones than stressing about cooking. But if you are going to do the whole gambit of a Thanksgiving feast, here are some tips:
- 🛒 Have your shopping list and get all your ingredients the week before! This will make certain that your grocery store hasn’t run out of anything and your turkey has all the time it needs to defrost.
- 🍗 Pre-order your turkey from your local butcher or grocery store! Taking the gamble that your grocery store has the turkey you want works just fine, but if you want something a little more special and to ensure that you get it, be sure to pre-order it to pick up with enough time to have it defrosted, brined, and ready to cook.
- 🥧 Cook things in stages throughout the week! Almost all desserts, sides, and fixings can be made a few days ahead of time and still be just as good if you cooked them the day of. Some things get even better when they have time to sit. This allows you to have all the space you need to cook your turkey and gently reheat your sides! It also gives you more time to be with your guests and have a cocktail or two!!
- 📝 Have a prep list with a plan of attack! Have everything you want to make written down with an order you will be cooking it in (what day) and all the recipes gathered! Nothing is worse than having the stress of trying to cook when you don’t have all your mise en place and recipes ready!
⏲️ Make Ahead
Make as much ahead as possible! I am a firm believer that almost everything can be done days ahead!
Green bean casserole, mac and cheese, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, mashed potatoes, candied yams/sweet potatoes, and pies will all be just as good if made the day or two before! This will give you all the time you need so you can focus on the star of the day — the TURKEY! 🦃
📅 Have a Weekly and Day-of Timeline
Plan your shopping weeks ahead, and what errands you need to run leading up to Thanksgiving. Then prepare a day-of timeline to make sure you are staying on task and not falling behind. The timeline would literally start with waking up at 7 a.m., brewing coffee, and end with sitting down to eat at 5 p.m., and everything in between that needs to get done that day.
Give some of Matt’s recipes a try!
