Nothing spoils Thanksgiving dinner faster than well, a spoiled Thanksgiving dinner. Whether you're cooking your first holiday meal or your hundredth, food-borne bacteria is your enemy. Avoid serving your turkey with a big old side of salmonella with these seven tips from food safety expert Tom Chestnut of NSF International.

1. Think outside the bird.
Stuff your turkey with aromatics like onions, garlic and herbs instead of traditional bread stuffing, which can be cooked separately. A stuffed bird takes longer to cook and won't necessarily cook evenly as the stuffing can pull moisture out of the meat, which results in dry turkey. Not to mention that undercooked stuffing is a risk for food poisoning.

2. If you must stuff ...
Don't stuff your turkey and refrigerate it ahead of time. Follow the rule that once it goes in the bird, it goes in the oven. Place the stuffing loosely inside the cavity; don't pack it in; and don't overstuff. There needs to be room for the heat to penetrate so everything can cook uniformly. Check with a meat thermometer that the stuffing reaches 165 degrees. It's not done till it does.

3. Cook it real good.
There's only one reliable way to tell whether your bird is done: a meat thermometer -- and we're not talking about that pop-up nubbin. You need to get a read on the turkey's internal temperature in three separate locations: the innermost part of the thigh, the wing, and the thickest part of the breast. It should be 165 degrees.

4. Know the high-risk foods.
Any foods that contain raw ingredients could be a potential health risk if they're not cooked and stored properly. That means raw cookie dough, homemade dressings, salads and unpasteurized drinks like eggnog and apple cider. It's maybe not the best idea to serve homemade versions of these.

5. Wash your hands.
About to touch the turkey? Wash your hands. Done touching the turkey? Wash your hands. Switching cutting boards? Wash your hands (and the cutting board). Using a different knife? Wash your hands. Can't remember the last time you washed your hands? Wash your hands.

6. Imagine that the raw turkey is a biohazard.
Don't put the unwrapped raw turkey directly on counters or in the kitchen sink. If any of that juice gets anywhere but your working surface clean it up immediately with an antibacterial solution. When you're thawing the turkey, place it on the lowest shelf in your fridge in a shallow pan to catch those evil juices.

7. Clean up!
Bacteria loves nothing more than a hot buffet left out in the open to cool, so put leftovers away within two hours of the meal and throw out anything that misses that window. Divide big batches of leftovers into smaller containers to help them cool down in the fridge faster.