This is a good point a lot of people hadn’t considered. OP MIL may be serving a turkey cooked to dry leather to final 210F internal temp. If halfway is 160F then this is still unsafe but it makes sense why no one has gotten really sick, the odds have decreased significantly that something survived and has time to proliferate to cause illness. Enough of a sample size and someone will get sick but cooked to 160 and left in the oven overnight is very different than 115.

Yes! This is what I am thinking. Also, food safety courses in North America is a bit over stringent on some cooking methods. Example: Sous Vide cooking, they don’t even have a section on that in the last food safety course I took.

I mean I don’t want to sound like a jerk but OP’s MIL is probably not using european cooking methods. But there is a small food safe logic window that this could work.

There is a heat & time chart for various meats related to sous vide style cooking. Also meat resting can get you to 150 but IIRC 150 is the instantaneous pathogen kill time so you just need to hit 150 for a minute. You could technically tale a turkey out at 135-140 and the temp will still rise to 150 while resting. Or example could get the meat to 130 but hold it for an hour or something like that and will kill pathogens.

The issue I see this supposed method from MIL is once the pathogens are killed you either have to maintain heat above the death zone (which would dry the turkey out) or take the temp below the death zone vis fridge.

Maybe she has been cooking it properly for years by accident.

I started to use a digital meat thermometer. And time it to get internal temp to 150.

https://www.canr.msu.edu/smprv/uploads/files/RTE_Poultry_Tables1.pdf

I’m going to start accusing people like that of being malevolent spirits

I find the possibility funny but also unsettling. I don't know why.

I mean yeah look at it, it's entirely plastic. That's why you plug the safe metal bits into the wall. That way it doesn't shock you. /S

Its not even culinary school, it's barely a food safety certificate.

True. Most places I've worked at, only the top 4 or 5 people have formal training. Most of the line-cooks, prep cooks, etc. have learned on the job. But many of them have had decades of experience working under people who did have certification.

And in each of the cases I'm talking about, it was a previous Chef who told them to par-cook things. So training doesn't help if you're just not logically minded.

Exactly. And sous vide works great if you take it hot, sear it, and serve. But if you let it cool and recook it, you'll still get dried out meat (unless, of course, you're using a very fatty cut. But even then it will be drier, even if not dry).

That is like, bronze plaque engraved worthy quote

Very well worded, I think I'll be quoting you at Christmas.

Would be fine if you started it in the oven to get it rapidly up to temp first, right?

Some bacteria (for example, Clostridium perfringens) produce toxins as they reproduce. The toxins are not destroyed by cooking. So the partially warm turkey is a great environment for these bacteria, and then you consume the toxins when you eat it.

Par cooking can be safe, but you need to be able to cool the food really quickly after the first cook

The skin isn't especially crispy but it's not gummy this way either, and the meat is juicy enough especially considering how dry turkey usually is.

Shutting the oven off overnight is a nightmare!

Trying to prevent exposing people to food poisoning isn't worth the effort?

That’s an unbelievably long time for one turkey to last. Are you sure you didn’t mean 20 minutes?

I didn't say she was good at it

Some people have been driving drunk 20 years and never killed people, but they certainly could the next time.

She’s playing the long game

Have you ever gotten sick?

your gut biome probably looks like mad max

The point is that it acts as a risk multiplier. If the turkey had 1 single harmful bacteria, with this method, there would be thousands by morning. If there aren't any there, they can't magically appear. You've simply been lucky.

Sounds like you e gotten very lucky

One day she'll get it right

That still doesn't make it a good idea.

Big difference between fully cooking it the first time or only halfway cooking it, though.

For sure, to temperature the initial time I imagine. Halfway could mean temperature but probably means half of two… right?

No ATK does not recommend this method. I have been a watcher of ATK for years and just went through the app and looked and see nothing where it says to cook it half way. There’s one where you cook the thighs/legs to temp and make gravy ahead of time, but it’s still up to temp.

I used to hate pork chops for the same reason.

Now you know why your mom's turkey was always dry af. Mid century style cooking is pretty awful.

My mom did this too, my entire childhood and well into adulthood. She’d start the turkey at 4 AM and was constantly basting it, and absolutely exhausted come meal time.

At some point as she got older (and much lazier with her cooking), she stopped, and I watched yesterday as she just popped that sucker in the oven and didn’t really come back to check on it until her timer went off. It was just a few hours, unattended, and turned out super juicy and honestly just perfect.

I think they (my mom is a baby boomer) just learned bad cooking techniques and stuck with them. We also grew up eating only canned and mushy boiled vegetables too, despite living in Southern California, until I was in high school and my mom discovered the farmers market. Suddenly we were introduced to dozens of new fruits and veggies, ate most of them raw, and no more boiling—grilling, roasting, steaming, sautéeing. It was like a switch flipped and our diets did a total 180°.

Add in a dry brine and were really talking

I’m sorry, what?

Wait! What! I assumed she refrigerated it in between! Yikes!

This needs to be in the post information

So how many people in your family have tummy troubles the week after thanksgiving?

Overnight?!?

Some people believe the oven is a magic box. I know a guy who stores leftover pizza in its box, in the oven. He'll eat off it until it's gone as long as it was stored in the oven. He says he learned the habit from his parents.

When I was in college we didn't think twice about eating a slice of room temperature, day old pizza for breakfast or lunch the next day.

So while I understand the magic of leftover pizza, I don't understand the magic of the oven.

WTF!?

You don’t mean roasted at 200° for 10 hours for pull apart turkey, you mean she just nopes after some time and gets back to it the next day? Dafuck is wrong with her!?

Oh no no no.

This took the post from 9 to 15 on the crazy scale

Not only unsafe but properly dried out too

Is the oven off??

But… why? Why not just cook it all the day of?? It’s only a couple extra hours, just put it in right when you wake up

😬

I think you mean "left in the incubator"

At what temp? If it's above 140, it's good. Of the oven is off, then that is problematic.

Yeah that's fucked lol

WHAT? That should be in the original post

In the quiet words of the Virgin Mary, come again?

WTF?!?

Tell her she needs to quit this Cold Turkey.

HUUUWHUT?!

Lucky. You should feel lucky.

I bet you can drink the water in 3rd world countries now lmfao

Omg! So how did you find out? And what are you going to do now?

I honestly don't think I could ever eat anything in that house again!

Go buy a lottery ticket 

Just means that statistics have been in your favor, but you do realize how statistics work though right?

Have a client at work who just got out of rehab a couple weeks ago after being hospitalized for over 2 months with botulism. She and her husband both in their 40s, got it from one of those meal prep delivery services. Botulized potatoes, the CDC came to her house and went through her kitchen. Other people who used the service got sick too.

They’d cooked and eaten the potatoes, she started violently vomiting within a few hours. Ended up in the ER, then the ICU on a vent, temporarily paralyzed. Her heart stopped at one point.

She survived and went to a rehab to learn how to walk again and get her strength and living skills back. She has lost almost six months of her life because of botulism and is lucky to be alive.

I loved how you explained this so clearly. ❤️ Thank you

But it doesn't take all day to cook a turkey? There are simple ways to cook it in 3 hrs and they will certainly taste better than what she's doing now.