How to effectively time a short thawing and brining of a a turkey

Not all turkeys are the same, and personally, I would not risk letting an entire turkey go rancid in the refrigerator. There is so much you don't know about this turkey:

• How was it butchered? In particular, how long was it sitting on the block and was it packed immediately afterward or left sitting out for a long time?

• How quickly was it cooled down to "transporting" temperature after butchering?

• Was it transported immediately, or was it stored for a while before transport, and if so, what were those storage conditions?

• How specifically was it transported? What were the environmental conditions, aside from temperature? Was it exposed to air? Could it have picked up any other contaminants?

• Just how cold was the refrigerator at Trader Joe's? Are you sure that it's consistently that cold?

• What if the turkey was shifted around? For example, what if some other customer picked it up, tossed it in a shopping cart, then after an hour of shopping decided to put it back?

• How did she transport it? I'm guessing in a non-temperature-controlled trunk? How long was it in that condition/environment before finally making it into the fridge?

• Was the temperature in the fridge turned down as far as it can go long before putting the turkey in there? If not, how long might it have taken to get down to the desired temperature, especially with a massive slightly-warmed-up turkey in there?

• How cold does her refrigerator get? Is it a new refrigerator? Are you both certain that it gets as cold as the rep at TJ's is assuming? Have you actually stuck a thermometer in there to measure the environmental temperature around where the turkey would be stored?

I'm not expecting you to answer any of these; my point is just that there are so many variables, so many things that can go wrong, and the quoted 10-day storage period (as well as the sell-by date) is for storage under ideal conditions.

I've seen turkeys go rancid in the fridge after just 2 days. I've seen others take longer, but still far less than 10 days to go rancid. It's an incredibly frustrating and completely avoidable experience. Just put it in the freezer! She just needs to make sure she gives it a couple of days to thaw in the fridge, due to the size of the bird. A half-frozen turkey on Thanksgiving day is almost as useless as a rancid one.

Let's start with the assumption that Safety is never in the balance. Safety has to be taken into account for any method that we use and that means that we want to keep any food that is time and temperature sensitive out of the danger zone. The danger zone is the temperature range from 40 degrees F to 140 degrees F.

If you have plenty of time, letting the turkey defrost in the refrigerator is safest and easiest, since there is little that you have to do. The turkey is always out of the danger zone and all you have to do is put it in the refrigerator. However, it can take a very long time, 24 hours for each 5 pounds of turkey weight...4 days for a 20 pound turkey.

Assuming you haven't planned that far ahead, the other safe method is to defrost in the sink with cold running water. The water doesn't need to be pouring out, just a steady stream so the water turns over regularly. Water is a better conductor of heat than air, so the turkey will defrost more rapidly than in the refrigerator.

The danger zone is why you don't want to defrost the turkey using warm water, or just sitting on the counter. In either of those cases, the outside meat is warmed into the danger zone before the inside defrosts, so you have some of the meat (the part that is most likely to have come into contact with contaminants) in a temperature range that promotes bacterial growth.