<p>My sister and I read the NY Times article about cutting the turkey up and braising the light and dark meat at different rates. We plan to try that this year.</p>
<p>I really dont like the roasting bags–you are basically steaming the turkey and
you get absolutely no savory drippings that you can only get from a dry roast process. No drippings kind of put a crimp in the gravy process. Im a big fan, however, of the previously mentioned upside down process. I have also had success with pre brined kosher bird. Im not Jewish, but my mantra with any meat or poultry is “when in doubt – go Kosher!”
Something that I will be doing this weekend is taking an inexpensive frozen turkey I bought on special for under $5. and cutting it up (removing the breast for later use) and roasting the heck out of it with chopped vegetables , and then simmering the goodness in a large stock pot, reducing that and making about 6-8 quarts of stock for gravy and post T-giving soups. Saves a lot of time on the BIG DAY.</p>
<p>SoCalGal09 - We usually get two smaller birds (10 - 12 pounders) rather than a huge one. Then we have more drumsticks, wings etc. We often cook them differently too - one traditionally roasted, the other deepfried, smoked or barbecued - that’s a good solution if there’s not enough oven room. I’ll even sometimes get a third and cook it after dinner for leftovers and/or to freeze. I once made the mistake of letting a couple of teenage boys in the kitchen the next day - they devoured most of a whole, small bird!</p>
<p>LA Times just had an article on an alternative to brining: a salt-rubbed turkey. Easier, more flavorful, NOT salty. First time they published the recipe (really, more a technique than a recipe), they got more than 200 emails saying it was the best turkey ever.</p>
<p>The technique also works with roast chicken.</p>
<p>[It’s</a> the turkey everyone loves - Los Angeles Times](<a href=“http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-turkey19-2008nov19,0,4842837.story]It’s”>Food editor Russ Parsons on the turkey everyone loves)</p>
<p>Great thread idea. I especially like the last two posts by gusapara and Slitheytove regarding using two smaller birds and a salt rubbed method.</p>
<p>I tried brining a few years ago by doing the brining in a cooler - perfect size and I could just keep it in the cold garage. I thought it tasted just a bit better but no one else noticed anything different. My conclusion was that it was not worth the effort.</p>
<p>Tried brining a couple of years ago and it didn’t make much difference…and the gravy was overly salty.
Tried the Kosher turkey from TJs once and I spent 2 HOURS plucking out teeny little feathers from the bird. Never again.<br>
I went back to trusty Butter Ball and it’s been fine. Costco has them cheap. Slow cook. Butter under the skin. I usually like more natural products but who cares if it’s once per year? People just want something that tastes good.</p>
<p>I would try that , SlitheyTove…just not this time because I already have the brine mix. I just found out that I am hosting the dinner part of our neighborhood progressive Christmas party and was thinking a turkey and ham might work out well…I would love to try it out</p>
<p>I’ve read about the salting thing too, and might check that out. I will probably only do a bone in turkey breast, as the turkey is no ones favoritw in my house, even though we find the brining helps a lot. I also make my stock before the big day with darkly roasted legs and thighs. The salty drippings from a brined bird are just a small part of the gravy.</p>
<p>Here’s Cooks Illustrated’s “Basics of Brining”</p>
<p>And here’s what they say about salting</p>
<p>Published July 1, 2006. </p>
<p>Does salting chicken and turkey season the meat in the same way as brining?</p>
<p>While the test kitchen strongly endorses brining chicken—soaking meat in a solution of salt and water before cooking—we also accept that there’s not always the space to fit a big container of chicken and brine into the refrigerator. And in some instances, like our Spice-Rubbed Picnic Chicken, brining can also lead to rubbery skin. To solve this problem, we turned to salting the chicken overnight, which helped the meat retain moisture as it cooked—and didn’t harm the skin.</p>
<p>Chicken naturally contains some salt and lots of water, which coexist in a happy balance. In coating the chicken with salt, we threw off that balance. To restore order, or equilibrium, water in the meat moved to the surface, where it dissolved the salt.</p>
<p>But wouldn’t drawing all that water out of the chicken make the situation worse, causing the meat to dry out? It certainly did—until we figured out the timing. When we tried cooking chicken that had been salted for three hours, the chicken cooked up drier than if we hadn’t salted it. (The juices that had made it to the exterior simply evaporated in the oven.) But when we cooked the chicken after six hours, the story changed entirely. By that point, the exterior salt had pulled so much water to the surface that the balance of the salt concentration had changed. To restore equilibrium, the water simply changed directions, flowing back into the meat. But this time—and here’s the key—the dissolved salt went along for the ride. Essentially, we had “brined” the chicken using its own juices instead of a bucket of water. </p>
<p>Our conclusion? Liberally salting the chicken and allowing it to sit for up to 24 hours can be as effective as brining (It works in a similar fashion, just without the water). Here are some tips for doing it right:</p>
<p>Plan ahead. Chicken salted for less than six hours cooked up dry. (Not enough time for the salt to travel into the chicken.) But beyond 24 hours, the added salt began to break down the interior muscle fibers and the meat cooked up mushy.
Get under the skin. Salting works best when the salt is applied directly to the meat; the skin acts as a barrier.
Don’t oversalt. We had the best results when we coated the chicken with slightly more salt than we normally would use to season it. (After all, most of the salt ends up in the chicken.) Our formula: about 1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt per 1 pound bone-in chicken.</p>
<p>Science for Skeptics: What About Turkey?
After developing the above analysis for chicken, we turned our attention to salting, rather than brining, a turkey. Weighing salted and unsalted birds both before and after roasting convinced us that salting could indeed also help turkey retain moisture and produce a juicier bird. But a few naysayers wanted visual proof that the salt was worth the effort.</p>
<p>Our first thought was to mix either food coloring or turmeric with the salt, but the color compounds in both were too large to pass through muscle cells in the meat. Next we attached an electric meter to the turkey and ran electricity through the breast to determine where the salt had penetrated, but the tests produced inconsistent results. We needed a compound that once dissolved would travel the same path as the salt to the center of the meat. The two likely candidates were tincture of iodine and copper sulfate, both vibrantly colored inorganic salts. The test with rust-colored iodine did not work, but the turkey coated with the blue copper sulfate lit up like a roadmap of salt penetration: The meat was dyed blue from the skin to the bone. Don’t try this at home-—copper sulfate is poisonous-—but we finally convinced even the most stubborn kitchen skeptics that salting works.</p>
<p>Recipe Roast Salted Turkey ( you may have to be a subscriber to see this…my sujxcrition is SO worth it…)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cooksillustrated.com/recipes/detail.asp?docid=7823[/url]”>http://www.cooksillustrated.com/recipes/detail.asp?docid=7823</a></p>
<p>toneranger - TJs has kosher brined and non-kosher brined - big price difference and I haven’t found feathers!</p>
<p>I’ve never brined–seems like a lot of work. I brown the turkey at 350* for one hour the evening before, then cover it with foil and bake overnight (and well into the next day) at about 180* When everything else/everyone is almost ready I remove the foil and brown again at 350* for about 15 minutes or so.
I like this method because you KNOW the meat is “done” but it is moist–and the timing of the rest of the meal (sides not ready? guests late?) doesn’t matter. The turkey is ready when you are.</p>
<p>I’ve brined every year for the past 6, and have brined another turkey for Christmas dinner at my parents’ house and will be brining one for Thanksgiving dinner at my SIL’s house this year. I’ve sent ahead a shopping list and will bring a few esoteric spices with me. I use a couple clean kitchen trash bags inside a cooler, and then stack a bag of ice on top of the bird, I never put it in the fridge. (At my folks’ house in FL, I just ran out and bought a very cheap thin styrofoam cooler, which they had the option to keep afterwards.)</p>
<p>It produces the most moist and flavorful turkey I’ve ever tasted (and I’ve cooked turkeys for Thanksgiving for over 20 years now), and gets rave reviews from the guests. Worth every bit of work, to me… and it’s not even really all that much more work, since I’m in the kitchen on Wednesday anyway making pies and cranberry relish, and pre-cooking wild rice and sausage for Thursday’s stuffing.</p>
<p>I vote two BIG thumbs-up for brining.</p>
<p>I am too lazy to brine.</p>
<p>But does anyone have simple (non-brine) suggestions for a moister turkey? Slow cooking vs. faster cooking?? I don’t mind a dry turkey, but H. and family do. The best I’ve ever had is cooked at a local deli. They usually cook a very large bird, but the owner says it’s done in two hours, at a higher than usual temperature. Must be a convection oven(?)</p>
<p>I’m surprised to see so many people say it’s too time consuming to brine. I’ve brined our turkey for 10 or so years and I would never not brine again. It takes 10 minutes tops to mix the brine. Then I put the turkey in a large cooler with cold water and a LOT of ice and set it on the back porch overnight.</p>
<p>As to the gravy being too salty, I rinse the bird well (inside and out) before roasting and have never had any complaints.</p>
<p>If you’ve never brined before I highly recommend trying it at least once!</p>
<p>Seniormom what are the temps like at night where you are? Is the ice melted by morning?</p>
<p>Temps are in the 40’s here at night. There are still ice cubes in the water in the morning and the water is plenty cold. If you’re concerned about it, put a LOT of ice in the water (like a half bag or more of grocery store ice) and check it again before you go to bed and then once again first thing in the morning. If you feel it’s melting too fast then add more. Just be sure you don’t freeze your bird ;)</p>
<p>I usually mix the brine at 9pm-ish the night before and don’t put the turkey in the oven till close to noon (we eat Thanksgiving as an early dinner rather than a mid-day meal) so it’s it the brine for over 12 hours. I always check the water in the morning just to be sure it’s still cold enough.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t use or recommend brining in a garbage bag. They are not food safe or food grade and the chemicals from the bag could leach into the turkey. I agree SeniorMom08…no complaints on the gravy as long as the rinsing is thorough.</p>
<p>I brine my turkey (in the garage in a large cooler–fresh amish turkey) and then we cook it outside on the grill in a roasting pan. My family LOVES it. We baste it frequently with a butter/amaretto mixture. It cooks a little faster, so you do have to watch it. The cooking time varies on how hot your grill gets, so I use a thermometer! FANTASTIC! I am not a gravy lover, but I don’t remember every getting complaints that its too salty!!</p>
<p>^^^ I was once forced to cook an entire turkey dinner on my grill when we lost power. The real fun was , we were having a tropical storm at the time. It worked out fine , except for the gravy, which had a charred taste to it</p>
<p>I don’t care for the butterball self-basting birds; to many chemicals. The first year I brined a turkey it was fantastic. The following years, with the same recipe, not so much. The first year I used a Bell and Evans free range turkey. The following years I used Murray’s free range. Does anyone have similar experiences. Earlier in the thread somebody recommended the Trader Joe turkeys. Does any one have experience with them? I do the entire meal myself, except for wine and pumpkin pie, and its really anoying having the turkey be a gamble! While I am asking, does any one wan to share their stuffing recipe?</p>
<p>My dressing (as we call it in our family) is very similar to this one:</p>
<p>Cornbread Dressing
1 large yellow onion, chopped
2 cups minced celery including some leaves
1-1 1/2 sticks butter
5 cups crumbled corn bread
2 cups herb-seasoned stuffing mix–I use Pepperidge Farms
1 teaspoon rubbed sage, or more to taste
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning, or more to taste
2 tablespoons dry parsley
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
1 egg, beaten
2-3 cups chicken broth, to desired consistency
NOTE: The cornbread/stuffing mix ratio can vary. I sometimes use half of one and half of the other, but we prefer a bit more cornbread than white bread.</p>
<p>Preheat oven to 350 degrees. (It’s also fine to bake the dressing anywhere from 325-375 degrees, depending on what else you are baking at the same time; you may need to adjust baking time to compensate.)
Sauté onion and celery in butter until tender. Place in large bowl and stir in corn bread, stuffing mix, sage, poultry seasoning, parsley, salt and pepper. Add beaten egg and broth, starting with 2 cups and adding enough broth to make stuffing quite loose but not sloppy.</p>
<p>Mix well, then put in a greased baking dish (I use a deeper dish, but a 13-by-9-inch baking dish works) and bake about 45 minutes to 1 hour, until stuffing is cooked throughout (I sometimes cover the pan to keep the stuffing more moist - maybe take foil off the last 15 minutes of cooking to get it nicely browned).</p>
<p>Believe this recipe is from the San Antonio newspaper, but it’s almost exactly like mine.</p>