Tomorrow is our national holiday to make a dry, overcooked bird. But we want to make it as un-dry and un-overcooked as possible. Salt pork to keep it moist, cheesecloth soaked in broth. I’ll do that. But there is a brining controversy. Yes or no?
This is your open thread on better bird-making. Help out all your fellow Sloggers with the best techniques.
I always subscribe to the herbs with kosher salt basting method, never use brine.
salting vegetables before cooking (cukes, zukes) draws moisture out of the cells through osmotic pressure. i don’t get why a bird would be different.
I brine, and partway through cooking I cover the breast with aluminum foil so it won’t overcook while the dark meat finishes. NO BASTING! NO STUFFING!
Brining works. It just does. But this year, I’m throwing caution to the wind and doing a rub. I know! I’m crazy!
Basting does NOTHING for the bird. It’s a lie.
@3 – YES. You know how to do this!
WHO THE FUCK ISN’T BRINING? THAT PERSON IS A MORON AND SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES.
Max, I too was confused about the osmotic potential aspect, but according to this article, osmosis actually has nothing (or little?) to do with it:
http://gizmodo.com/5862312/brine-your-tu…
Brine yes with salt and herbs.
Then either cooked “beer can chicken” style with a pear cider or apple cider
Or in a oven cooking bag with herb infused olive oil on the skin and a loose chopped herbs paste for the cavity.
I am leaning towards a beer can chicken style this year.
@2 Here’s why brine works: When the water leaves the meat by osmosis (yeah, you’re actually right about that part), it tears apart the cell walls and tenderizes the meat. Marination ensues, and the poultry is rendered WAY moister than it would have been sans brine.
No brine. Cut the bird up. Start the drumsticks first, then the thighs, then the breast. Stuff a pumpkin/squash instead of the bird, and add a bit of lard or goose fat to the stuffing. I add some roasted pumpkin seeds to the stuffing.
Once you go brined and deep fried, it’s hard to go back to regular turkey.
@8 My friends and I always use a tallboy of PBR. It has always been my job to go to the closest convenience store on Thanksgiving day to purchase said PBR. Then we watch Dead Snow and episode after episode of House.
If you don’t like it brined, you’re brining wrong.
Remember to take it out of the brine and dry out for 24 hours before roasting. Makes the skin crisp. Soggy skin is gross.
The key, of course, is not how you cook the bird, because you’re going to drown it in lots–LOTS–of giblet gravy. Focus on the homemade gravy, and no one will care if you serve sliced presto-logs.
Weber grill. Stuff the cavity with quartered apples and oranges. Get some butter up under the skin. Bank the coals up the sides of the grill with a pan in the center between the coals to catch the grease. Baste every 20 minutes with a mixture of orange juice and melted butter. Cook til done. Juicy who’re meat. Juicy dark meat. Usually have to scrap the wings.
white not who’re.
What controversy? – of course you brine.
We brine. Then we smoke it for 6 hours in the outdoor smoker. Tried everything else and won’t ever go back.
Totally agree with the aluminum foil cover for part of the cooking – it’s critical.
Add more spices and things at the end, that won’t survive the full cooking process.
PBR sucks. Use Rainier or Kokanee – or better yet, a nice sweet Belgian brew.
@10–that’s the way to do it. Given that the white meat is just right at 160-165 and the dark meat isn’t at it’s best until 180 or so, you’ve got a dilemma. Cutting up the bird works great. You do give up the table-side carving of the whole bird ritual, but totally worth it flavor and texture wise.
It’s turkey. There is no way to make that meat tasty. If you want tasty meat start with a tasty animal not something that is a step above crow.
Or at least cook it the way such animals should be by making a stew or some other such dish.
@20, good god, you don’t EAT the white meat, do you?
As long as you don’t follow the FDA rules and cook it until the breast is 165° (or whatever crazy-ass temperature they recommend) you won’t have a dry, stringy bird. But, if you’re determined to brine, do a “dry brine” instead of the usual watery kind.
3’s got it. Brine! Brine! Brine!
If you buy a crap bird, you can coat it in powdered gold and it will be a crap meal. Spend your time, money and interest on buying a heritage bird that wasn’t mass produced to be as cheap as possible and taste like sawdust.
Of course, it’s too late for you to do that this year, so you’ll just have to suck down another meal of brined sawdust.
I don’t know anything about cooking, but I know that brining a turkey makes it the most delicious. Also, I thought that you needed to brine it for more than a day. Kinda late for that.
You have to try it both ways with the same brand to know really how much better brining is. Now that I know, I always brine. However, there can be too much salt if you are not careful. The herbs, molasses, etc are debatable. Butter under the skin? All that pales in comparison to a proper brine.
Biggest problems:
An ideal bird will have perfectly cooked dark meat, white meat, and crisp skin. It is veryy difficult to have all three, and roasting too soon after a wet brine can make it more difficult. Rest the bird a day after brining, as fnarf mentions.
Second problem: drippings are often too salty to make gravy with, which of course is completely unacceptable. I usually get into a snag trying to fix this. Help?
Happy fucking thanksgiving!
I’m solving the dry turkey problem by making fried chicken.
If you don’t brine, then you better have another trick up your sleeve like straight-up Texas-style BBQing that bird. Old-school dry roasting is for chumps. Chumps who like to eat rubber.
But since I brought it up – thanks, me – if you’re really legit you’ll just BBQ it. Slow-cook it on some good aromatic wood. A big bird, I’m thinking maybe a full 24 hours over the pit. Mesquite would be nice but we ARE way up north so some fruitwood would be acceptable.
I always brine with sea salt and herbs. My boyfriend insisted on doing the bird this year and refuses to brine… Although he’s at work right now and I’m thinking about sneaking it into a brine right now… He’s going with the turkey bag method. Never done one in a bag, it better be good.
-foil over the bird? soggy skin
-cut up the bird first? pffff
-@23 has got it for the brave soles. cook the white to about 158, dark to about 165. something about flipping the bird.
-we all know basting doesnt do shit.
-@18 smoking is another admirable story, but shit can get dry easily (ive never had a juicy smoked turkey)
-@21, two slow cooked crock pot turkey legs are nice.
-all birds are good eatin’
Brine that sucker overnight, take it out to dry for a couple hours around noon, then fry it till golden brown and delicious. Lighting the fire to table-time: 1 hour.
Brine the hell out of that mo-fo.
Spatchcock it! (That’s what she said!)
I’m having crab-stuffed prawns instead.
Just stuff it and put it in the oven ’til it’s done. Generations of our ancestors did it that way and we’re all still here to talk about it. Maybe they knew what they were doing.
Fuck turkey. Let’s talk mashed potatoes. No one seems to know how to do those right.
You can also do a salt cure if you don’t have the room for a brining bucket. It works on the same principle as dry rubs for beef, salt drawing moisture out of the meat, mixing with the water, and being reabsorbed. Same principles as brining, but you not adding any additional moisture.
http://kitchenmusings.com/2006/11/nobrin…
@37 southern style- russets, then as much salted butter and whole milk that you can get in it without actually tasting just butter or milk. ~1.5/1/.5 potato / butter / milk. taste as you go of course. then add salt + pepper
@39: Whole milk? Pussy. Real cooks use half and half.
Brine that fucker then follow this recipe http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2…
That’s how I did the turkey the last two Thanksgivings and both turkeys that I used with this method were incredible. My late dad had it in 09, which would be our last Thanksgiving before he did last year, and he said it tasted as good as his mom’s turkey.
Humphhh. People roasted turkeys for many years without first submerging them in salt water and somehow they were delicious.
My ex-partner and I went to his brother’s house one year and the brother produced a beautifully browned turkey from the oven. Then I noticed there was no gravy and brother said, “It’s smoked — much better.” Gravyless is not better. Brined is not necessarily better. Deep-fried is not at all better, especially when you get third-degree burns.
@44, our predecessors were working with different turkeys. Prior to modern industrialized agriculture – and that means prior to the mid-20th century, I’d imagine, so ask your grandparents – the “standard” turkey wasn’t really nearly as standard. They had much less hypertrophied breasts and probably more fat, and a more varied diet and natural muscle development meant more flavor. Stringier meats meant more structural proteins that melt down into tasty gelatinous moisture when cooked.
If you’re going to buy a Butterball – you shouldn’t, but if you are – you’re going to need to do some work on it to make it any good.
Better bet, if you can afford it and have the foresight: go to one of our awesome farmers’ markets around here and sign up for an heirloom, pastured turkey from a small farm. THEN maybe you won’t need to brine.
This year I brined with salt, sugar, various dried chillis ground up, cumin and lots of garlic. That sat for 24 hours, washed it off, dried it then rubbed coaco and more dried crushed chillis, and am smoking it for 24 hours at a cool 170. We’ll see how it comes out. I generally brine before I smoke, mostly becuase I do super cool slow smokes.
Stuffed, in an oven bag. Then the skin is rubbed with butter, paprika, salt, and pepper. Less cooking time, none of that basting bullshit, and I can get to the important stuff, like mashed potatoes (russets, whole milk, salt, pepper, and tons of butter), and giblet gravy (simmer the giblets and neck until cooked, then shred/dice and make a giant pan of milk gravy with the turkey drippings).
Cut up the bird before cooking? Horrors! This is about right:
http://vegetablecow.wordpress.com/2010/1…
“Thanksgiving is as much a food aesthetic as a holiday. A whole Turkey with all of the trimmings is an absolute requirement, otherwise you’re not celebrating Thanksgiving, you’re simply cooking food for people on a Thursday in November. By cutting your bird into parts, you’re butchering Thanksgiving’s semiotics. Would you cut your Christmas Tree into seperate branches and decorate them? Would you detach Baby Jesus’s head and limbs and pile them into a manger?”
Good recipe, too:
http://vegetablecow.wordpress.com/2010/1…
@40 holy shit. maybe thats what my mother used. potato flavored butter cream
@46 what kind of smoker? how do you keep it from drying? cocoa and chilis sound nice.
@40 try a pint of whipping cream and a stick of butter. I made a double batch of this: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/colcann…
Brining works great for a juicy delicious bird. Here’s the thing though – years of my mom’s terrible cooking have inured me to prefer a dry-ass turkey :/