00:00the turkey is the star of most thanksgiving tables but making sure it comes out just right
00:10can be stressful for more than 40 years butterballs free turkey talk line has helped home cooks
00:16through the day joining us is bill nolan culinary educator retired chef and supervisor for the
00:22butterball talk line thanks so much for being with us thanks for having me it's a pleasure
00:27all right bill what are some of the most common questions you get each thanksgiving
00:33well the most common question we've had historically since 1981 when we opened 44 years ago
00:40is how do i thaw my turkey you know a turkey isn't something that people make often you know they
00:45make it around the holidays uh it's a large piece of meat and so there's a couple different ways you
00:50can do it you can do it in the refrigerator over several days or you can do it in cold water to
00:55expedite that process if it's closer in that's why we always encourage people to make sure they
01:00know what they're doing 1-800 butterball call us we're here all week long they can also go to our
01:04website at butterball.com for a lot of different information including how-to videos and i'm sure
01:09over your many years you've had a lot of memorable calls any ones that stick out in particular
01:14yeah a couple come to mind you know nine years ago i was brand new on the talk line you know nervous
01:20talking to consumers and and i found it was really an empowering thing to do because we're helping
01:25people and i had a gentleman that called up and lost his had lost his wife in the last year and he
01:31really wanted to make a thanksgiving dinner for his children so i walked him through the process gave
01:35him the resources told him to call us the next day because we're here on thanksgiving as well and uh it
01:41was really a kind of a neat call to me because uh you feel like you're really making a difference with
01:45people what are your top tips to make sure the turkey comes out just right you know the the and
01:52this is when i talk to customers or when i talk to students when i'm teaching or when i'm talking to
01:57friends and family the best thing you can do is to be prepared number one and that is making a plan
02:04knowing exactly what you're going to do to make that turkey have the turkey make sure that it's going
02:10to be thawed in time know your cooking process what your oven temperature is going to be butterball
02:15recommends 325 in a pan have a pan that's going to hold the turkey make sure that your ovens are
02:23shelves are in the right place so that it's going to fit when you put it in that's all the homework
02:28you do ahead of time so when it comes down to the actual day of cooking it you're reducing that stress
02:33level because you have fewer unknowns okay the most important thing aside from being prepared on that
02:40is to have a reliable meat thermometer you know the way we talk to people has changed so much over the
02:44years how has that impacted the talk line are more people reaching out by text chat social media
02:49yeah all of the above really we introduced texting uh several years ago and we get several texts i mean
02:57it's great because people can be at the grocery store they have a question about the turkey and they can
03:02just send us a text and we'll help them uh we've introduced um social media we're on all the platforms
03:08and so we have experts here that monitor those platforms as well as experts here that answer the
03:15phone calls that come in because the phone calls are still the backbone of the talk line now what new
03:20trends or questions are you hearing from home cooks this year what we're finding out first of all is that
03:27more people are celebrating thanksgiving coming back up from the pandemic years you know in the pandemic
03:33years people weren't getting together so more people are hosting you know 89 percent of people responding
03:37say they're going to celebrate thanksgiving and about 86 percent say they're going to have turkey at
03:42thanksgiving so that's a trend that's going up because we want to see people coming together and
03:46enjoying the holidays bill nolan culinary educator retired chef and supervisor for the butterball
03:52talk line thanks for joining us here today and happy thanksgiving
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