How Long Do You Cook A 13 Pound Turkey

How To Cook a Turkey: The Simplest, Easiest Method

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Whether you're roasting a whole turkey for the kickoff fourth dimension, or just need your almanac Thanksgiving and holiday-flavor refresher, this guide volition help you through the steps to a perfect turkey: Crispy skin, tender meat, well seasoned, and and so delicious you lot'll wonder why you lot waited a year to eat it again. This is the easiest, simplest way to roast a turkey.

This method will work with whatsoever turkey: Big or small, brined or not, free-range or otherwise. Cooking times will vary, merely the basic technique volition exist the same. For reference, the turkey in the photos was a pre-brined 16-pound turkey from Williams-Sonoma.

Turkey Recipe Crook-Sail

How big of a turkey? This method is best for a 12 to 16 pound bird. (Buy 1 to 1 1/2 pounds turkey for each guest.)
How long to melt the turkey? 13 minutes of cooking time for each pound of turkey if roasting empty and 15 minutes per pound if blimp.
What temperature to melt the turkey? Preheat the oven to 450°F then drop the temperature to 350°F afterward putting the turkey into the oven.
What temperature should the turkey be? The turkey is done when it registers a minimum of 165° in the thickest part of the thigh.
How long to residue the turkey? Residuum the turkey for at least 15 minutes earlier carving.

(Image credit: Emma Christensen)

How to Safely Thaw a Frozen Turkey

Be sure to let your turkey completely thaw earlier cooking. The best way is to loosen the wrapping and identify the turkey on a blistering sheet, then thaw in the refrigerator.

How Long to Thaw a Turkey

What to Do If Your Turkey Is Still Frozen

If your turkey isn't completely thawed yet — no worries! Y'all tin can roast your frozen turkey and it will plough out only fine! If your turkey is still frozen — fully or partially — merely follow our instructions for cooking a frozen turkey. You'll be fine (and your gravy volition exist even more succulent).

Read more: How To Melt a Fully Frozen Turkey

How to Brine a Turkey

Any turkey will taste better if brined in salt for a twenty-four hour period or 2 before cooking. Brining is non necessary but it is a adept idea. This method has become popular over the last few years and involves immersing the turkey in a salt-water solution or dry-brining in common salt for a twenty-four hour period or so earlier cooking. The end consequence is moist, well seasoned white and night meat. We've had bully results with brining and heartily endorse information technology, although our method here will yet piece of work without brining.

How and When to Brand Turkey Gravy

After roasting the turkey should residue for at least xv minutes before carving. This is a perfect time to make gravy. Move the turkey to a cutting board and cover loosely with foil to keep warm. This way yous tin can apply all those tasty pan drippings for gravy making. (If you lot'd rather cheque things off in accelerate, information technology'southward definitely possible to make gravy ahead of fourth dimension, besides.) Read these how-tos for more than:

(Paradigm credit: Emma Christensen)

How to Carve the Turkey

Etching a turkey is just like etching an extra-big chicken: Remove the wings first, and so the thighs — pop out the joints that keep these pieces attached to the bird and cutting straight through the joint. When carving the breast meat, slice close to the rib cage with the flat of your knife right upward against the rib bones. One time yous take the meat off, you can divide the thighs into thighs and drumsticks, and cleave the breast meat into individual slices. For a good demonstration, scout our cooking school video on etching a craven, or follow this stride-past-footstep guide:

Go the guide: How To Carve a Turkey

Cooking Your Turkey

Are yous ready? Let's cook some turkey! If you get anxious during roasting, just remember that roasting a turkey is just similar roasting a large chicken. The aforementioned methods and ideas apply. Fifty-fifty if you don't get fancy with spices or brining or special basting liquids, your turkey will nevertheless turn out browned, moist, and flavorful.

Please share your own stories, advice, and recipe suggestions in the comments below!

Hither is our super basic, super simple, super like shooting fish in a barrel recipe for roasting a super cute turkey.

alcohol-costless
egg-free
low-carb
fish-free
peanut-free
shellfish-gratuitous
pork-free
sugar-conscious
gluten-free
wheat-complimentary
soy-free
tree-nut-free
red-meat-free

Per serving, based on

servings. (% daily value)

Calories 366
Fatty 19.4 m (29.9%)
Saturated 7.9 g (39.5%)
Carbs 0.iii grand (0.1%)
Fiber
Sugars 0.2 yard
Poly peptide 45.ii thou (90.4%)
Sodium 235.three mg (9.8%)

Ingredients

1
whole turkey, any size, thawed if frozen
2 cups
low-sodium chicken broth, vegetable broth, water, or other liquid
2 sticks
(i cup) melted unsalted butter or oil, for basting (optional)

Instructions

Gear up the turkey for roasting. Thirty minutes to an hour before roasting, take the turkey out of the refrigerator. Remove any packaging and the bag of giblets (bank check in the body cavity and in the neck cavity). Set the turkey breast-side up on the roasting rack set in a roasting pan and let it sit while the oven preheats. This takes the chill off the meat, which helps the meat cook faster and more than evenly. It also gives the peel time to dry, which promotes browning and crisping. (Note: Your turkey will likely nonetheless feel cool to the touch afterwards sitting at room temperature — that's fine and you can continue on with roasting.)
Preheat the oven to 450°F. Position an oven rack in the bottom third of your oven, remove whatsoever racks in a higher place it, and estrus the oven to 450°F. If you brined your turkey, equally we did, no demand to practice anything now. If your turkey is straight out of the parcel, rub it with some table salt and pepper earlier putting it in the oven. We recommend leaving your turkey un-stuffed and un-trussed, both because it's easier and considering the turkey will cook more evenly.
Add liquid to the roasting pan. When prepare to roast, pour the broth or h2o into the roasting pan.
Place the turkey in the oven and turn down the heat. Place the turkey in the oven and turn down the rut to 350°F. We recommend roasting turkeys breast-side upwardly. Some people like starting the turkey chest-side downward to shield the breast meat, but the thought of flipping a hot, sputtering turkey is not our idea of a good time. Instead, we prefer to simply shield the breast meat with aluminum foil toward the end of cooking if information technology starts getting too browned.
Roast the turkey. The rule of thumb for cooking a turkey is 13 minutes per pound. So our sixteen-pound turkey was estimated to melt in nearly 3 1/2 hours. All the same, some factors similar brining the bird, cooking with an empty (un-stuffed) cavity, and leaving the legs un-trussed volition contribute to much faster cooking. Plan on the 13-minute-per-pound dominion, simply showtime checking the temperature of your turkey nigh halfway through the scheduled cooking fourth dimension to gauge how fast information technology's cooking.
Baste the turkey every 45 minutes. Every 45 minutes, remove the turkey from the oven, close the oven door (don't permit that oestrus out!), and baste the turkey all over. To baste, tilt the pan if needed and utilise a turkey baster or spoon to scoop upwards the pan liquids and drizzle them on summit of the turkey. Basting with pan juices cools the surface of the turkey and slows downwardly cooking, which in turn keeps the breast meat cooking at close to the aforementioned rate as the legs and thighs. In the last 45 minutes or so of cooking, you tin can also baste the turkey with melted butter or oil. This helps well-baked up the skin and turn it a beautiful deep golden dark-brown.
Check the turkey'due south temperature. Begin checking the turkey's temperature about halfway through the estimated cooking time. Check the temperature in three places: the chest, outer thigh, and inside thigh (see photos above). In every case, the meat should exist at to the lowest degree 165°F when the turkey has finished cooking. If whatsoever identify is nether that temperature, put the turkey dorsum in the oven for some other 20 minutes. Shield the breast meat with foil if needed to keep it from overcooking.
Rest the turkey before carving. Remove the turkey from the oven. Grab i side of the roasting rack with an oven mitt and tilt the whole pan so the liquids within the turkey crenel run out into the pan. (These juices are used to make the gravy.) Then, elevator the whole turkey (nevertheless on the rack) and transfer it to a clean cut lath. Tent the turkey loosely with aluminum foil and let it rest for at to the lowest degree 30 minutes. This gives time for the meat to business firm up and the juices to be re-captivated into the muscle tissue, making the turkey easier to slice and gustatory modality juicier.
Cleave the turkey. Carve the turkey the same way you would carve a craven; run into the video above for a walk-through of the process. Remove the wings first, and then the thighs, then the breast meat. Once y'all take the meat off, you can separate the thighs into thighs and drumsticks and carve the breast meat into individual slices.
Don't forget well-nigh the leftovers. 1 final note! In one case you've sat down at the table, don't forget near the turkey dorsum on the counter. The leftover meat needs to exist refrigerated inside two hours of cooking, after which the risk of something nasty taking upward residence starts to increase exponentially. Be safety!

Recipe Notes

Ways to Add Season to Your Turkey: Rub your turkey with butter or oil for a richer flavour and browner skin, rub minced herbs or footing spices into (or beneath) the peel for more than flavor, place a few halved lemons or garlic cloves inside the cavity of the turkey.

Storage: Leftovers can exist refrigerated in an airtight container for upwards to 4 days or frozen for upwards to 2 months.

Nutritional data is based on a xv-pound turkey basted with i cup of butter.

Emma Christensen

Contributor

Emma is a former editor for The Kitchn and a graduate of the Cambridge School for Culinary Arts. She is the author of True Brews and Brew Better Beer. Check out her website for more than cooking stories.