In the kitchen

If you spring for a boutique bird, experts advise you to be prepared for a different cooking experience.

If you choose a heritage breed, said Echo and Rig’s Sam Marvin,

‘You’ll definitely get less breast, and you will get a lot less white meat.

“You won’t see that real whiteto-dark differential. The breast meat won’t be that big beautiful white color. It’ll have a little tint to it, because of blood flow.”

Mature birds also cook more quickly, said Kelly Bronze’s Paul Kelly, regardless of breed.

“Our birds cook at twice the speed of the standard supermarket turkey, (because) they have lots of intramuscular fat that conducts the heat through the meat a lot quicker than a bird that’s been killed very young and is very lean.”

All of that means that you’ll have to watch your turkey a bit more carefully, said Dustin Lewandowski of the Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group.

“Commercially bred turkeys … have been designed with the turkey button set-it-and-forget-it mentality, or to just set the timer based on the weight.”

That approach just won’t fly with better birds.

“More experienced home cooks need to learn to (cook turkey) with a little more care,” he said.

The internal temperature of a fullycooked turkey should be 165 degrees, according to the USDA.

“You want to start being cautious as it approaches 140, because the last 10 or 20 degrees come pretty quickly,” Lewandowski said. “If you’re going to rest your turkey, you can start pulling it out at 145 or 150 preparing for a later blast as you get closer to carving or closer to dinner that carries it up the rest of the way.”