Brine that bird!
I’m up late, way too late, the latest in a string of late nights laboring on stuff at work. I’m beginning to hate computers. The cathode rays are penetrating my brain and me no think good no more.
While I wait for my co-workers to get back to me about one of our systems, I want to talk about a very important subject this holiday season: brining your birds. If you’re like me (and if so, I’m truly sorry), you start thinking about Thanksgiving dinner two months prior. I’ve been meaning to pass this advice along for several weeks, and now seems like a good time.
Primarily, we’re talking about brining turkey birds, but maybe your holiday table includes duck or chicken. The advice applies no matter what avian friend you consume. The result will be succulent, evenly-cooked meat from wings to breast, a golden and crispy skin, and the enduring gratitude of your guests. I have cooked turkeys for the last three Thanksgivings, and the in-laws and relatives thought I was nuts at first. They still think I’m nuts, but it’s for other reasons now.
What is brining? It seems to be catching on among food-loving circles, maybe because it’s promoted by Cook’s Illustrated, which is kind of like the Consumer Reports of food. Brining is similar to, but not exactly like koshering. The concept is to soak meat in a salt solution, which tenderizes the meat and makes fast-cooking parts cook slower, and slow-cooking parts cook faster.
For best results, brine your turkey overnight, or for about 8-12 hours at least. Use one cup of kosher salt for each gallon of water, and make sure the entire turkey is covered in water. Flip the bird (ha!) over every once in a while to ensure that it’s getting evenly brined. Then, the evening before you eat, take the turkey out, dry it inside out with paper towels, and put it on a rack over a sheet pan in the refrigerator overnight. That will dry out the skin.
The next day, you can cook the bird as you normally do. Cook’s Illustrated recommends roasting over high heat for a while, then lowering the temp. This personal site has a few suggestions for brining, some of which I can’t vouch for. When brining chicken breasts, for example, using sugar in the brine solution works splendidly, but I don’t know about using herbs — does the taste really penetrate deeply into a turkey? The best thing is to buy a subscription to the Cook’s site and download the brining articles.
Final thoughts:
• You might be saying, “How can I brine a 20-pound turkey? I don’t have a pot or pan big enough to fit it.” Look, when the going gets tough, the tough go to the hardware store. In this case, go get yourself a big plastic Rubbermaid tub, the kind used for storing clothes. It’s only ten bucks or so, less if you get it at Wal-Mart.
• “But the bacteria!” you may be sputtering. “I can’t fit a Rubbermaid tub in my refrigerator! My loved ones and I will die a horrible death from poultry! Boo hoo hoo hoooooo! I don’t want to diiiiiieeeee!”
Get a hold of yourself! First, in most of the country, it’ll be cold before Thanksgiving. If the temperature never rises much above freezing, you’ve got a remarkable refrigerator in the great outdoors itself. If you live in places where Jack Frost doesn’t come, then work something out: put ice in the brine to keep it cold, then add more as the temperature in the tub rises (check the temp with a liquid thermometer.)
Second, the USDA will never tell you this, but if the internal temperature rises above 170-180 degrees, you’ve killed any harmful bacteria in the bird. (For Pete and all the Canadians, the metric equivalents of those temperatures are 4.3-76.54 deciliters, I think.) You could have left it out in the Arizona sun for two days, but if you cook it long enough, the turkey will not make you sick. It might taste funky, but there’s no reason to think it will kill you. That being said, brine at your own risk.
Now back to the @#$$% servers.