Thanksgiving: Defrosting Turkey - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. Once you get your turkey home you’re gonna want to keep it in the freezer until you’re ready to start defrosting it. It’s really important to defrost your turkey in your refrigerator because that would keep you safe from food burn contamination. You have to plan on at least 24 hours for each 4 pounds of turkey. So leave yourself plenty of days before thanksgiving to make sure when you got to stuff your bird on Thursday morning you don’t have a frozen turkey.