This year's turkey, turkey brine and all

The flash on my camera is still broken, the sun had already set on Thanksgiving day, and I didn't have any fancy schmancy lighting available. I have no idea what happened to the piece of paper on which I wrote the specifics of the turkey brine I made and used this time around.

2010-11-25

So, pardon me whilst I provide very little in the way of details. I started preparing the brine Wednesday morning. I used roughly 4 cups of kosher salt (I actually didn't have 4 cups left, so I substituted sea salt) and a heck of a lot of water. Enough to fill this pot all the way up to the top. I was dealing with a SIXTEEN POUND BIRD, not like the 10-12 pounder from last year.

Brought the water to nearly to a boil and made sure the salt dissolved. Then added parsley flakes and rubbed sage to the pot, let the liquid cool to room temperature, & my husband helped with the next step. He bagged the bird and the liquid in a huge, brand spanking new (unused) trash bag. Actually, I had him double bag the stuff; didn't want any accidents on the floor. Cleared a tupperware container, so we could surround the garbage bags housing the turkey and brine in ice. Poultry needs to stay cool, to avoid spoiling.

This year, unlike last year, there was no snow on the ground. Though we couldn't pack the turkey with snow, temps outside were plenty cold enough to keep our poultry company.


Thursday morning, my husband and I busily prepared many ingredients for both cooking the turkey and making chicken pot pie. I'll let you guess which is which. Just kidding on that last bit. Some potatoes, carrots, celery, and green onions went into baking the turkey. Also added freshly ground pepper, some apple cider vinegar, and brown sugar. I placed slivers of unmelted (straight out of the refrigerator) butter on the top of the turkey.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees (oven should be preheated as vegetables are being cut).

Cover turkey baking vessel. I baked the turkey for nearly 6 hours. Checked the internal turkey temperature (avoiding hitting the bone, of course) around half way through the bake time.

Can't tell from this photograph (STUPID broken flash), but the top of the turkey was golden brown. VERY exciting, considering this didn't happen last year. Juicy. Meat was falling off the bone by barely touching the meat.

Thanksgiving free range turkey, with brine

2009-11-27

I was really nervous about making any semblance of a complete Thanksgiving meal, since I've never done it before. On Thanksgiving Day, yesterday, I actually cooked nothing; Sally, Manda, Johnny, Ashley, and Mike blessed us with a wonderfully delicious meal. But the next day, today, I had been planning on having my international student friendship partner over and a fellow Denver Seminary student over for a meal. This would be the international student/friend's first traditional Thanksgiving meal and my first Thanksgiving meal preparation, so I was quite nervous.

My mother-in-law and numerous other friends had suggested the Reynolds Oven Bag as an easy and sure way to cook turkey. I had even purchased some bags early in the week. However, once I had them in hand, I chickened out on using them. I don't know whether it was the idea of throwing them in a plastic bag or the chef part of me coming out. Anyhoo, I asked around to see by what other methods people favor cooking turkeys, and one particular approach was of interest to me, albeit far from the simplest. It involved soaking the turkey in salt water for about a day, which I later learned is a process called brining.

Thankfully, my husband was of tremendous assistance, and he humored me by doing it as I suggested (even though I was flying by the seat of my pants). I had purchased a fresh, free range turkey that had been flash frozen (whatever that means). Having a turkey that was not confined to a cage was very important to me, even if it meant paying a bit extra. Our turkey was somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-12 lbs.

If you'd like the details of how we treated the turkey, pre-cooking, I defrosted it in the refrigerator for a couple of days. Then I brought roughly 2.5 gallons of water to a boil and dropped approximately 3 (is that right?) cups of kosher salt and waited until the salt was entirely dissolved before turning the stove off. Let the salt water cool to room temperature. We double bagged brand new trash bags, placed the entire turkey inside and submerged it in salt water. Then, I had my husband stick the bag in a huge tupperware container and he surrounded the bag with ice cubes and snow (leftover snow from about a week and a half ago). Since we're dealing with poultry, it needs to be kept cool to prevent it from spoiling. We left the turkey in salt water for roughly 24 hours. The next morning, this morning, I had my husband pull the turkey out, get rid of the internal organs, and rinse the turkey under water.

Here are the ingredients for the turkey that I used:

• a couple of tsp of thyme.
• a couple of tsp of sage.
• some pinches of brown sugar.
• diced celery - I used probably 5-6 stalks.
• diced carrots - I used 3-4, I think.
• 1 onion.
• 10-12 lb turkey.
• 1 cup of water.
  

I lined the bed of the roaster with the ingredients, minus the turkey, before putting the turkey on top. Cooked the turkey for about 2.75 hrs, at 325 degrees fahrenheit, with the lid on. Look so juicy.


After we enjoyed the fruit of our labor, he said, "guess we'll always be having turkey brine." The turkey was juicy and tasty, to be sure. And our guest absolutely loved it, too; had to take some home with her. My husband graciously helped by doing most of the lifting and pouring, the grunt work for the turkey preparation, while I just directed traffic and manipulated the other ingredients and spices. So good, it's worth the effort, we all said.