Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum here. American Thanksgiving is the kind of family
Speaker 1: feast that everyone has slightly different traditions around, from what
Speaker 1: desserts are must have, as to whether football is really
Speaker 1: the main event, to exactly what kind of potatoes are
Speaker 1: being served Boil them, mash them, stick them in the stew.
Speaker 1: But one thing that's near ubiquitous on Americans Thanksgiving tables
Speaker 1: is turkey. As of twenty twenty three, eighty nine point
Speaker 1: seven percent of people surveyed said that turkey was part
Speaker 1: of their main course plans for the day. The tradition
Speaker 1: is a slightly strange one. The turkeys are native to
Speaker 1: North and Central America, but whether or not they were
Speaker 1: part of the first Thanksgiving feast among pilgrim colonists and
Speaker 1: Native Americans in the sixteen hundreds is a complicated question
Speaker 1: because there are several candidate dates and locations and peoples
Speaker 1: who might have been involved in the first Thanksgiving, and
Speaker 1: there's no really solid documentation of any of these feasts.
Speaker 1: We basically got the idea that turkey is necessary from
Speaker 1: a woman in eighteen hundreds by the name of Sarah
Speaker 1: Josepha Hale, who thought the myth of the First Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: was a really nice idea and that it might bring
Speaker 1: people together surrounding the contentious times leading up to the
Speaker 1: Civil War. A lot of our concepts of Thanksgiving come
Speaker 1: from her and the recipes of her time, including yes,
Speaker 1: roasted turkey, but also stuffing or dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy,
Speaker 1: cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. As many of us know
Speaker 1: from personal experience, roasting a whole bird that's as large
Speaker 1: and dense as a turkey is a difficult prospect because
Speaker 1: most ovens heat food from the outside inn so by
Speaker 1: the time the inside is cooked to a safe temperature
Speaker 1: a witch for turkey is right around one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty five degrees fahrenheit or seventy three celsius, the outside
Speaker 1: of the bird might be a bit dry and overdone.
Speaker 1: There are lots of ways to combat this. Dry brine
Speaker 1: is my personal favorite, and that's a separate episode. Go
Speaker 1: on and google it right now if you need to.
Speaker 1: But we can also roast a little easier, knowing that
Speaker 1: we have access to several temperature reading technologies to keep
Speaker 1: track of the internal temperature of the bird as it cooks,
Speaker 1: so that you don't let it go longer than necessary.
Speaker 1: There are simple and expensive meat thermometers that you can
Speaker 1: leave red in the oven and check periodically, and fancier
Speaker 1: probe style thermometers with digital readouts on the outside of
Speaker 1: the oven so you don't have to keep opening it,
Speaker 1: and even ones that connect to apps so that your
Speaker 1: phone will give you an alert when the turkey hits temperature.
Speaker 1: But a lot of turkeys come packaged with an incredibly simple,
Speaker 1: inexpensive device that gives you a visible queue when the
Speaker 1: bird is done, the pop up timer. If you've never
Speaker 1: seen one, they usually look like a skinny ballpoint pen
Speaker 1: with a point at one end and a red teb
Speaker 1: visible at the top of the other end. If it's
Speaker 1: not pre inserted, which it often is, You stick the
Speaker 1: turkey with the pointy end, placing the device deep into
Speaker 1: the innermost part of the turkey's thigh and wing or
Speaker 1: the thickest part of the breast, and then set your
Speaker 1: oven temperature. Then all you have to do is watch
Speaker 1: for that red indicator stick to pop up out of
Speaker 1: the case and you know the inside of the bird
Speaker 1: is cooked. But how does it know okay? Pop up
Speaker 1: timers consist of four main parts. The outer case with
Speaker 1: the point the red stick that pops out of it,
Speaker 1: a coiled spring putting tension on the stick, and a
Speaker 1: small bit of soft metal similar to solder that's basically
Speaker 1: gluing the stick down into the point of that outer
Speaker 1: case despite the push of the spring. That soft metal
Speaker 1: is solid at room temperature and colder, but it will
Speaker 1: melt and become liquid at right about one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty five degrees fahrenheit or seventy three celsius. When it melts,
Speaker 1: it releases the red indicator stick, and the spring pops
Speaker 1: the stick out of the case. This ingeniously simple and
Speaker 1: single minded thermometer first popped up in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: as the result of a serious brainstorm session conducted by
Speaker 1: the California Turkey Producer's Advisory Board. Basically, they'd been receiving
Speaker 1: complaints from consumers saying that even though they had cooked
Speaker 1: their turkey according to a reliable recipe, it still came
Speaker 1: out overcooked and dry. The advisory Board was worried that
Speaker 1: their good product was getting a bad name. The way
Speaker 1: I've heard the story told, they were sitting around their
Speaker 1: office at their wits end when one of the board
Speaker 1: members looked up and noticed the fire sprinklers in the ceiling,
Speaker 1: which are triggered when a material inside heats up from
Speaker 1: a fire and reaches a particular temperature. Inspiration hit and
Speaker 1: now pop up timers are just about as ubiquitous as turkeys.
Speaker 1: One little known fact is that these timers are reusable.
Speaker 1: If you dip the tip in hot water, it will
Speaker 1: remelt the metal and you can push the pop up
Speaker 1: piece back into place. Then let it cool and the
Speaker 1: piece will be stuck back in its original position and
Speaker 1: ready to use again. Today's episode is based on the
Speaker 1: article how pop up turkey timers work on HowStuffWorks dot com,
Speaker 1: written by Marshall Brain. Brain Stuff is production of by
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and
Speaker 1: is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from my
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.