Herb-Roasted Turkey Breast and Stuffing Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Do you cook stuffing before putting it in the turkey? ›

Give stuffing a head start by heating it up before placing inside the turkey. Like the turkey, stuffing needs to reach the 165 degree mark. If the bird is done before the stuffing, remove stuffing from the cavities and continue to cook in a baking dish.

Roast Turkey Breast with Traditional Stuffing is perfect if you're a Thanksgiving novice, have picky eaters or are doing a small-scale Thanksgiving. It's as showstopping as a whole turkey! Best of all, you can get it prepped the night before and it cooks in a fraction of the time it takes to roast a whole turkey.

Not only will it amp up the flavor of your turkey meat, but the extra fat will ensure that coveted crispy skin. Never pass up the opportunity to add flavor to turkey by stuffing the cavity with a simple aromatics mix.

For the best results, our Test Kitchen recommends cooking a stuffed turkey at 325°F.

You can cook the bird and the bread in the same pan with delicious results. Published Nov. 14, 2022.

Fully cook raw meat, poultry, or seafood ingredients before adding to stuffing. Combine the ingredients and place them in your bird immediately before cooking. Don't stuff whole poultry with cooked stuffing. In addition to the turkey, the stuffing's center needs to reach 165 F.

It's personal preference whether you choose to cook a turkey breast-side up or breast-side down. The United States Department of Agriculture advises to cook a whole turkey breast side up during the entire cooking time.

How do you clean a turkey before cooking it? Well... you don't! Just like with other meat, the USDA recommends skipping washing your turkey before you cook it. It doesn't matter if you're roasting, frying, or smoking your turkey, there's no need to give it a rinse unless you've brined it (more on that below).

Wash your hands, but not the turkey! Many consumers think that washing their turkey will remove bacteria and make it safer. However, it's virtually impossible to wash bacteria off the bird. Instead, juices that splash during washing can transfer bacteria onto the surfaces of your kitchen, other foods and utensils.

Fruit, especially dried fruit like raisins, cranberries, figs and apricots can seriously improve a dreary box of stuffing. That bit of sweetness plays beautifully with other flavors on the table. I've found that fresh fruits like apples and pears are stellar as well.

Why not cook turkey with stuffing? ›

When stuffed, the turkey's raw juices come in direct contact with the stuffing. This means that in order to be safe to eat, your stuffing has to reach 165°F. But by the time the stuffing is safe, the rest of the turkey will be well over 180°F, and will basically have turned into tough, dry turkey jerky.

Stick with salt and pepper, put herbs like rosemary, thyme, and sage to work, or take spicy Cajun seasoning for a spin for some kick. Whatever blend you choose, spread it all over the turkey—on top, underneath, between the body and wings and legs, under the skin, and even in the cavity of the bird.

To achieve a perfectly golden, juicy turkey, let the bird spend time both covered and uncovered in the oven. We recommend covering your bird for most of the cooking time to prevent it from drying out; then, during the last 30 minutes or so of cooking, remove the cover so the skin crisps in the hot oven.

However, as a general rule, a stuffed turkey should be cooked at 325°F (165°C) and the cooking time should be calculated at 15-18 minutes per pound (0.45 kg) of turkey.

For this reason, many experts recommend baking the stuffing outside the bird, where it can easily be cooked to 165°F and is less likely to harbor bacteria.

If you want to stuff your bird, you should actually microwave the stuffing, and then you put hot stuffing inside the turkey. It's a bit of chore, frankly, but that's the best way, if you actually are going to cook a stuffed bird, is to begin with fairly hot stuffing.

So it absolutely must be fully cooked before being consumed, whether the stuffing has meat in it or not; and. If you're wondering if you can cook the stuffing meat to help it along – yes you can but it won't help. It still gets soaked with raw turkey juices when it's in the oven so it needs to come to 74°C/165°F again.

But stuffing is soft and porous by nature. That's the main reason to cook stuffing inside a turkey: The bread cubes soak up roasting turkey juices and transform into incredible-tasting flavor bombs. That means the stuffing needs to reach a safe temperature (165°), so it won't make you sick.