Unless the cold water was changed every 30 minutes I wouldn't eat it. The rule is 30 minutes per pound ... fresh cold water every 30 minutes.

Warm to touch? No way would I eat that.

I use the water thawing method. Change the water every 30 minutes, per pound. Wouldn't touch that turkey with a 10 foot pole!

My DS!, the chef said the best and most safe way is to put the turkey in a large container and have the ice cold water running constantly and slowly over the immersed turkey...you leave the faucet going. Best is of course to thaw in fridge over several days. Only other acceptable way would be the changing ice cold water q 30 min.

Those folks are going to be in the ER...

So how does a DIL sit at a Thanksgiving table and not eat any turkey without offending the MIL? She already voiced her concerns about the method of defrosting...(no, the water was not changed during the night)and she was told it was fine to do it this way.

If you already voiced your opinion, then not taking a piece is the way to go. I would say be totally honest, but that would ruin your MIL's day. OTOH, there's gonna be a line for the bathroom, or when the guests arrive home, they will be sick. Tell your DH not to eat any either. MIL may not even notice. I don't notice who's eating what on Thanksgiving with all that is going on in the house in about 2 hours, lol. How many guests will be in attendance?

I wouldn't eat that turkey for all the tea in China. A recipe for disaster for sure.

Sorry to be blunt, but does your MIL live in a cave? Every single show (even those generic how to's on the morning shows, and those shows that aren't technically "cooking" shoes per se) which aired this morning, as well as most this past month, talked about food safety. The number one no no is what your MIL did with her turkey.

Can't wait to hear the post-mortem on this one, so please check back in when you're holiday's over.

I wouldn't eat that turkey for all the tea in China

Or the gravy. Or stuffing, if it was cooked in the turkey.

Lots of people used to defrost turkeys like this. And some probably still do. I don't see how it could be warm to the touch unless they superheat their kitchen.

I would eat it.

I agree the ways listed above are better but I'd eat it. UNLESS they keep their house temp really hot. Since she was trying to thaw it.... It's not unusual for me to leave frozen meat sit on the counter to at least partially thaw at times.

But that said, if I didn't feel safe eating something I wouldn't. Better safe than sorry. I wouldn't mention it and if MIL says something I'd nicely tell the truth. If she's offended that's her problem. I ate maybe a bite of turkey today and don't know that anyone even noticed.

Shee, not a good idea to let any meat/poultry/fish thaw at room temp. If you've never gotten sick from it consider yourself very lucky.

I have a friend who is very lax with food safety and she brags that she is right with her methods because they were never sick; they've been only lucky,
I think.

She used to give me containers of her xmas dinner because she knows I love leftovers but I'd throw them out as soon as she left.

Even being sick one time is one time too much.

mona, are you going to that dinner or is it just your daughter ?

Our daughter is visiting in-laws in Texas. The turkey was left out overnight without the water being changed. In addition to the turkey a small duck was defrosted in this same way.

This morning, the turkey and duck were both seasoned and left out on the counter for another 2 hours at room temp before being placed in the ovens. These birds were left unrefrigerated for about 15-16 hours.

She will place a slice on her plate but not taste either of the birds and kinda play around with the pieces. Thank goodness the gravy was store bought so she can have that on the dressing and potatoes.

I think these folks are nuts. If they've done this before and haven't gotten sick, then they're mighty lucky people.

Please let us know who all gets sick later. ;D

I wouldn't eat it, but I know the difficulty of being in that situation as a guest. My MIL did the same thing every year, and to top it off after lunch all leftovers were left out on counters at room temp. until reheating and re-serving at dinner in the evening. DH said that's how she had always done things, and no one ever got sick in their family from it. I am SO glad I am the one doing the holiday cooking now!

Growing up, my mom always thawed meat(including ground beef) on the counter at room temp. all day and then cooked it for dinner that night. I have NEVER done that, and never will. We never got sick either, but I think meat is a lot more contaminated today.

When my DD was @5 we visited & stayed with a collegue of DH's who lives in Madrid. Needless to say, that culture doesn't observe the food safety "rules/standards" that we in the US do. I was so ill by the 3rd night, I couldn't get up off of the marble floor in the bathroom. I only mention that it was marble, because it was the only thing that somewhat helped my nausea, laying on a cold floor. I slept in there for a night. I then spent two days of our trip bedridden, sipping gingerale, and eating a cracker or two at most so that I could take some stomach meds I luckily packed in my cosmetic bag. During the remainder of our visit, I ate only when we went to a restaurants, which thankfully was pretty much every night. I made a point of eating something freshly made in front of me while we were sightseeing. To this day, just the thought of those first few days in Spain makes me nauseous.

Europeans must have a iron stomachs that can handle bacteria that mine couldn't.

Our host's wife made a fritatta (sp?) the day we arrived. Eggs, potatoes, onions, etc. She served it that day, and for the remainder of our trip it sat on the counter in their kitchen and they ate from it daily. It never saw the inside of their refrigerator. Just gross.

I am funny about food safety, but would rather be safe than sorry.

Our host's wife made a fritatta (sp?) the day we arrived. Eggs, potatoes, onions, etc. She served it that day, and for the remainder of our trip it sat on the counter in their kitchen and they ate from it daily. It never saw the inside of their refrigerator.

That would be what is known in Spain as a tortilla. I haven't been to Spain, but my son spent a year there and loves Spanish tortilla. I learned to make them and they are delicious. He did say that they do leave them out on the counter and just take off slices throughout the day. Doesn't sound as risky to me as turkey left out for hours.

Enjoying the comparisons between European and American attitudes about refrigeration. My husband's from northern Europe and when visiting his family it's always surprised me how small their refrigerators are -- they don't have to be big when you leave so many things out on the counter all the time. For the first few years my husband was in the US he was always surprised at the size of American fridges and how much we opt to put in there. His standard line, and apparently this is sort of a rule of thumb for Europeans in his circle, is "if you can't find something in an American kitchen, just look in the refrigerator." They don't refrigerate things like opened jams, jellies, condiments, peanut butters, even eggs, by the way. Have never been sickened by any of it but in our house, it all goes right into the fridge. I'm very careful about cross contamination and spoiled food.

So far, nobody's sick.

However, my DH could give me better details this morning. It turns out the turkey and the duck were in the sink, without any water, for about 17 hours.

Why would educated adults do something so stupid?

Glad nobody is sick. My guess is if it got cooked properly after that it would have killed most of the bacteria.

I can't recall how many decades my mom would put the turkey in the basement laundry sink a few days b/4 Tkg'ng/Christmas for it to thaw and we/guests never got sick once.
I wonder what's changed?

I put a 14lb frozen turkey in the refrigerator last Thurs and it was still a bit frozen yesterday.

I would have properly cooked it and eaten it.

I honestly doubt you would get salmonella from a counter-thawn turkey, provided it was properly cooked.

I have had salmonella before - true, hospital-diagnosed, requiring IV treatment salmonella, and it was the one of the worst experiences of my life. But I would have still eaten that turkey.

Carrie

carrie, do you know what you got it from?

I ate chicken at a new teacher's banquet and got very, very sick. I was interviewed by the health dept as were many of the other new teachers. It was so awful, I'll never forget it.

I wouldn't have eaten the turkey.

I also know someone who thinks it's silly to only eat ground beef that has no pink. E coli, anyone?

Staphylococcus aureus produces a heat-resistant toxin. Normal cooking temperatures won't destroy this toxin. Clostridium perfringens, if left to grow at room temperatures, produces spores that aren't destroyed at normal cooking temperatures. In other words, even if you cook the chicken thoroughly, and even if you kill off every bacteria in it, you could still get sick from the byproducts the bacteria produced when they were still alive.

Here is a link that might be useful: Can you cook that chicken/turkey that was thawed to room temp?

Jim, I've been cooking turkeys for 30 year (usually about 18 lbs.) and I always set it on the counter, but turn it over every hour. Never been sick. The secret is not letting it get above "cold"..nowhere near room temperature.

After doing that the day before TG, it's still frozen in the center and that's when I run it under cold water to thaw.

I tried thawing one in the fridge, but like you said, it was still frozen a week later!

Contracted Campylobacter 6-7 yrs ago (unintentionally ingested raw egg while tasting something I was cooking--stupid me!). It was awful. Never, never, never want to experience it (or anything like it) again. I am freaky about poultry being cooked through (and never lick the bowl while preparing anything with raw eggs!).

Local Health Dept. called me, too. Apparently it is on the CDC list of food borne illnesses that need to be checked out (to locate the source in case of an outbreak).

Things thaw from the outside in not the inside out, I doubt the inside was room temperature, and "warm to the touch" sounds suspicious to me. Turkey has more thermal mass than air so even if it was room temperature it would have felt colder--so that statement makes no sense to me--unless they thawed it in hot water.

The way most people used to get sick from turkey in the past was stuffing it the night before. Even if you were refrigerating it, you were reversing the above situation, heating the inside with warm stuffing (which often contained broth) creating a sealed, anaerobic, incubated environment with the appropriate ingredients for a bacterial explosion.

pal, I know nothing about thermal mass so I can't explain my daughter's description of the way the turkey felt other than there was no coolness to it. Of course it wasn't hot, but it was at room temperature. And after all that time out on the counter I wouldn't have eaten one single nibble of the darned bird.

nancy_bee - the health department conducted a very intense, 45 minute interview with me after my diagnosis (a child in the area had died of e-coli that year, so it was a Really Big Deal). To the best of our determination, whatever I had cooked for dinner two or three nights before falling ill was likely contaminated, but was fine after being cooked (no one else in my family got sick).

natal, the two bacterium you mentioned in your post are different from salmonella. Proper cooking would eliminate most danger of salmonella.

Carrie

Carrie, does it really matter what name the bacteria owns if it makes you sick?

Were we really lucky in olden days, or is contamination from lack of refrigeration true, but greatly exaggerated?
My mother left roasted beef out overnight and long into the following day, mayo was a pantry item until my teens, and butter stayed on the table until gone. Potato salad went to the beach and we ate it hours after swimming. Probably took the leftover and ate the next day. Bacon fat was stored by the stove for days and days to use for seasoning
As for Europe. We have friends who make chicken stew or soup and keep it on the stove all day, unheated. They also (shudder) use the same cutting board for raw poultry and then bread cutting later after only a quick rinse of the board :>O I dunno. I'm pretty paranoid about bacteria, but I do wonder.
Oh! BTW....Read a news item from health site recently that stated you CAN thaw ground beef( chicken too? Cannot remember), etc. in HOT water. I believe this is if you are cooking it immediately after thawing

Thaw it in hot water and you start the cooking process.

People died from eating improperly prepared/processed food. It was just never documented as such. Now we know better. If you want to take a chance with your own health that's one thing, but don't subject someone else to foolish or potentially fatal behavior. There's no excuse for pretending it won't happen to you or someone you love.

Leahcate:

Not everything needs to be refrigerated. Butter and fat, as well as certain types of prepared meat and food. Eggs used to be stored for months in lard in cool places like a root cellar. Studies are conflicting about mayonnaise on its own...its rather acidic for certain types of bacterial development. Its actually probably ok in a typical room temperature lunch bag for a few hours but I don't know about under the hot sun.

The presence though, of salmonella in chicken and their eggs is quite common in some parts of the US. I won't eat eggs unless they are very well-cooked (because I live near NJ, and am skittish about chicken (also because of the hormones), but I will eat sushi at any reputable restaurant no matter how many articles my father sends me about parasites.

We do not have the same immune systems as Europeans and probably our parents did when they were younger, and this is why Europeans can eat certain things and American tourists eat the same thing and get sick. A former co-worker of mine, French, slowly lost her ability to eat things when she went back to France each summer, and started getting sick from things she ate growing up there.

However, some food hygienists have gone a bit overboard, including one I saw who would recommended not eating left over pizza without reheating it until the cheese was bubbling. I think that is complete nonsense.

Its partially our fault really, in our hyper fanaticism about germs leading to the overuse of antibiotics and even things such as antimicrobial building materials and ink pens, we have really been messing with our immune systems and we not only don't challenge them as much, we are creating superbugs such as MRSA. The idea that we were headed toward the development of multiply-resistant bacteria was a theory when I was a microbiology major, and now the CDC has a number of organisms locked up that are resistant to known antibiotics.

In my house the butter lives on a shelf in the cupboard. I hate hard, unspreadable butter. Because of the high fat content the only risk would be that it would go rancid, but that would take quite a bit of time, much longer than a stick of butter lasts around here.

Interesting pal. I did read that when people became ill at a picnic, the potato salad, due to its mayo, was often the prime suspect. Actually, it was far likelier that the acidic mayo protected the salad.

Sounds like my mother. She'd put the ground beef on the counter and let it thaw all day till she got home from work to cook it. Left overs ALWAYS sat out on the counter all night. She also thawed her turkey on the counter, and rinsed it the day she was going to cook it. I do recall her stuffing the turkey just before cooking, however, and we never got sick from eating our mother's food.

I did contract salmonella one day after eating a hot dog at a swap meet. The Dr. said he didn't think it was the hot dog but perhaps something else I'd eaten that day. Not sure, but it took me years before I could eat another dog. I was sick for 2 weeks! Nearly ended up hospitalized.

I agree with Pal on the way we're over-cautious with bugs. I've had MRSA before, and I'm susceptible to infections so I have to take anti-biotics frequently, and it worries the heck out of me. I don't use anti-bacterial things, just plain soap & water, and wash things well first before eating. I suspect that a lot of food borne illnesses aren't necessarily from the meats, but from the raw foods. More people get e coli from salads or melons than meats it seems. I'm fanatical about washing raw foods before cutting them, ESPECIALLY any raw food that lay on the ground before harvest. Ever seen an outhouse in the fields? Makes me shudder every time I drive past a farm field at harvest time. (That's the same reason I don't drink spring water or shallow well water!)

After being a bit grossed out by this topic, I enjoyed finding this line
but I will eat sushi at any reputable restaurant no matter how many articles my father sends me about parasites.

Natal - the OP said "isn't this a prescription for salmonella", and I am merely saying that IMO, providing that the turkey was properly cooked, no, it doesn't sound like they were in danger of salmonella.

Carrie

in all probability the turkey would have been fine if it was cooked properly... if i thought any poultry was undercooked, regardless of thaw method, i would zap it a bit in the microwave before i ate it!!

many, many people get sick from cross contamination... counters/plates, etc not cleaned properly from the raw food that sat on it, etc....ie: if a raw turkey that happened to be tainted with samonella sat on a plate while being stuffed, then if that plate sat out and was just rinsed hastily and used to hold the cooked turkey afterwards, or a cutting board that was used for some meat and then used for raw veggies without be cleaned properly, or serving raw veggies that might be tainted from soil and not cleaned properly, or by the cook, etc simply not washing their hands when needed!...
cooked food is usually unlikely to get you sick if it is cooked properly and not cross contaminated afterwards-
and, it is a good idea to reheat leftovers and not eat them 'cold' esp. if they had been sitting out for any lengthy time on the table or counter!

The turkey would be safe to eat if cooked enough but I probably wouldn't chance it.

As for eggs, in Europe they don't wash their eggs before they are sold and so they can go without refrigeration but in the states they need to be refrigerated.

Though I remember my parents used to hide our hard boiled Easter eggs the night before so they sat out all night. We never got sick.

Well, most of the people seem to have fared well after eating the turkey and duck. The dad had/has a touch of "the stomach flu" and is a bit under the weather since the day after Thanksgiving. Who knows if he's got an upset stomach because of what he ate or he really has the flu?

I think they were very lucky this time and I still am sticking to my guns....I would not have eaten a single bite of those birds.

I agree with you, better safe than sorry. thanks for the update !

This brings to mind a quote from one of those teen movies (Clueless? Mean Girls?)
"I'm one stomach flu away from my ideal weight"

No, I wouldn't eat it. I also never, ever thaw any type meat/poultry, etc. on the counter. Fridge only.
Mona, I'm glad to hear they faired so well, but why take chances? Your daughter made the wise choice.

tina

Mona, if it was really too risky to eat that turkey, wasn't it just as risky to put it on her plate, play with it a little on her plate, as you wrote, thereby contaminating the plate, fork, and any other food the turkey or its juice may have come in contact with? If she was worried, that was not a good plan. How could she isolate the turkey and prevent cross-contamination?

I suspect that touch of "stomach flu" suffered by one of the diners was more likely a touch of....well, gluttony? I'm glad no one got sick. I am another who would have eaten the meat.

I was poisoned by my sister's stewed chicken once and since then I don't eat anyone's food unless I know their food handling protocol. She had left this cooked chicken out for about 12 hours in a warm kitchen. I was the only one to eat left overs and the only one to get sick. Wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. You pray to die!!

I would not have hesitated for one moment in telling MIL I am afraid to eat your turkey and duck, but thanks anyway.