Brining a Turkey

Brining a turkey is pretty easy. It just takes a little time and preparation. All you have to do is prepare the brine, soak the turkey in the brine, and then cook! Not much too it. Each of the steps is describe more below.

I like to prepare the brine two days before you will be cooking the turkey. The reason is that you have to cook the brine and this gives time for the brine to cool before you add the turkey. If you don't do that, and add the turkey to the warm (or hot brine) it will start to cook, and you'll end up with a spoiled turkey.

So, if you are going to cook the turkey on Thursday (like for Thanksgiving), cook the brine on Tuesday night and then put in the garage or somewhere cool to let it cool down. Then you'll be ready for the next step.

I also like to get some blocks of ice ready in the freezer. You can just ice cubes, but they tend to melt faster, so I'll make some bigger blocks with various containers from the kitchen. Make sure you have zip-lock bags to put the ice in (melted ice dilutes the brine).

Here is one turkey brine recipe that I like to use. There are others. Feel free to experiment with the flavors in the recipe.

2 1/2 gallons of water
3 cups kosher salt
6 Tbps Morton Tender Quick
3 cups honey
10 bay leaves
1 tsp ground cloves
1 1/2 tsp pickling spices

Combine everything into a large pot and heat to 160 degrees. Don't go higher, because higher temperatures will harm the honey flavor.

Remove from the heat and cool to room temperature.

This should be enough to do an 11-12 lb turkey. You may need more or less depending on how big your turkey is and what you are soaking it in.

The next step is to put the turkey in the brine. I do this the day before I am going to cook the turkey. I do it in the afternoon, but there is no hard and fast rule here. It should soak at least overnight.

The keys in this step are to have the turkey covered with brine and to keep the brine cold. You don't want to turkey going bad while it brines.

I usually use a cooler. Put the turkey in the cooler and pour the cooled brine over it. If it doesn't cover, you might need to get a smaller cooler. Then put the ice blocks you created (or ice cubes) into zip lock bags and put in the brine with the turkey.

It's important that the ice not just melt and dilute the brine--that's why I put it in the zip lock bags.

It is even more important that the water and turkey be kept cold so that the turkey doesn't spoil. Use plenty of ice and check every few hours to make sure that the ice isn't completely melted.

Put the biggest blocks of ice in before you go to bed to help it stay cold through the night.

The recipe normally calls for 3 gallons of water, but I changed it to 2 1/2 so that I could add a fairly block of ice, not in a zip-lock, overnight, and it wouldn't dilute the brine too much.

After the turkey has brined overnight, you can just cook it normally. The brine will help keep the turkey moist and full of flavor.

You will find, however, that if you try and make gravy from the drippings, that they will very salty. You might need to dilute with water.

Not very difficult to brine a turkey. Try it once and see how you like it. You may never cook a turkey another way again (although I hear that deep fried turkeys are pretty good also).