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When it comes to Thanksgiving, everyone knows that the #1 enemy of a perfect holiday is the dreaded Dry Turkey Syndrome.
Has this ever happened to you? You’ve spent hours on Thanksgiving making the perfect pumpkin pie, cornbread stuffing, and creamy mashed potatoes, yet when mealtime arrives, out comes the turkey doing its best Sahara Desert impression in front of all your guests?
To keep this from happening to you again, put down your bowl of sandy turkey and let the Thanksgiving Genie share with you the secret of making perfectly juicy, flavorful turkey…
The secret is salt. Not the salt from all those tears you cried when you first tasted your bone dry turkey but a few cups of kosher salt, a little sugar, a lot of water, some spices, and some time to soak in a large clean bucket, bowl, or turkey roasting bag.
Popular with professional chefs, brining your turkey is the simplest way to guarantee your dinner guests the moist, flavorful turkey they are wishing for. Ideally, you’ll want to brine your turkey in your refrigerator the night before you plan to serve it, but even a 6-8 hour brine soak can make quite a difference in the texture of your turkey.
Those suffering from Crowded Refrigerator Syndrome may choose to store their brining turkeys in a large cooler filled with ice as long as they keep an eye on the temperature inside the cooler and replenish the ice as necessary.
You can learn how to easily brine your Thanksgiving turkey in the less than 3 minute video by Chef Randall Stasuk below, which is followed by a link to his helpful written brining recipe.
Enjoy!
Chef Randall Stasuk’s Turkey Brining Recipe (Adobe .PDF file)
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November 21st, 2009 at 10:14 am
great tip - thanks!
November 22nd, 2009 at 5:14 pm
[…] Hugging the Coast has some good tips and video on brining your Thanksgiving Turkey. […]
December 13th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
A good brine, will make a superb turkey! Highly recommend doing this!