How long to cook a turkey
How long to cook a turkey
Roasting times by turkey weight at 180 °C, stuffed and unstuffed, with the internal temperature and resting time.
Unstuffed bird at 180 °C / 350 °F, covered for most of the cook, then rested 30 minutes.
More turkey times
Common questions
How long does a turkey need to rest?
Thirty minutes, and it will still be hot. A bird this size holds an enormous amount of heat, and the temperature at the centre keeps climbing for the first ten minutes after it leaves the oven. Resting also lets the muscle relax so the juices stay in the meat rather than running onto the board.
Should I stuff it?
It makes the timing much harder. Stuffing insulates the cavity, so the bird takes about 30 minutes longer and the stuffing itself has to reach 74 °C, by which point the breast is usually overcooked. Cooking the stuffing separately gives a better bird and a crisper stuffing.
Do I need to baste?
It helps the skin colour evenly but does little for moisture, since the skin stops most of it reaching the meat. Every time you open the oven you lose heat and add to the total time, so once at the halfway point is plenty.
How far ahead can I thaw it?
In the fridge, allow roughly 10 to 12 hours per kilogram, so a 5 kg bird needs two to three days. A turkey that is still partly frozen at the centre will never cook safely to schedule, and this is the single most common Christmas timing failure.
Egg times come from the thermal-diffusion equation for a spherical egg published by Charles D. H. Williams (University of Exeter), calibrated so a large fridge-cold egg at sea level matches the times cooks actually use. Size, starting temperature and altitude then follow from the physics. Treat the result as a very good starting point, not a guarantee, because pans, hobs and eggs all vary.