I brined a turkey once and really liked the results. The downside is that you can't stuff it with dressing. ....Also in my opinion small birds are more tender so if you have a crowd coming you might brine one small bird and do another the regular way.
The 1st most important thing is make sure your brine is cold when you put the bird in it. Do up your brine the day before, let cool to room temp, put it in and leave in the fridge all night, put the bird in it in the morning. Other than that you are right on....
We make wayyyyy more dressing than will fit in any bird so it's a non-issue for us. We eat dressing for about a week after.
Well,..after doing a trial run with a small bird, "Brining" makes a difference...!
I ended up using this recipe, really simple.
Turkey Brine Video
I've never been a huge Turkey fan, but I eat it a few times a year. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being Turkish prison gruel and 10 being all you can eat at the Cheesecake factory, turkey usually ranks about a 6.5 on my meter. I like it okay, it's like eating dry chicken.
With the brine, it moves it to probably an 8. The white meat is still a little dry, but not as dry as cooking it conventional. The dark meat is a whole different story because it sits in the juice as it cooks. The dark meat itself might go 9-9.5, it's like eating candy. I wonder if maybe cooking the white meat down, or flipping it during cooking would help.? Anyhow it made a big difference.
Before cooking, you wash the bird well and dry. There is no indication it's been in a brine other than the color might have changed. The juice is superb.....! Would be excellent for gravy making. The few things I added are barely perceivable and not hardly noticable. They all blend together to ENHANCE the flavor, they don't change it. So, if you want to brine one and put some spices in it, unless you do something really really funky, I think you'll be fine using the juice to make gravy.
I'm going to do the big one for Thursday and probably let it soak longer than the 12 hrs this one soaked.
Overall, I give it thumbs up.
I ended up using this recipe, really simple.
Turkey Brine Video
I've never been a huge Turkey fan, but I eat it a few times a year. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being Turkish prison gruel and 10 being all you can eat at the Cheesecake factory, turkey usually ranks about a 6.5 on my meter. I like it okay, it's like eating dry chicken.
With the brine, it moves it to probably an 8. The white meat is still a little dry, but not as dry as cooking it conventional. The dark meat is a whole different story because it sits in the juice as it cooks. The dark meat itself might go 9-9.5, it's like eating candy. I wonder if maybe cooking the white meat down, or flipping it during cooking would help.? Anyhow it made a big difference.
Before cooking, you wash the bird well and dry. There is no indication it's been in a brine other than the color might have changed. The juice is superb.....! Would be excellent for gravy making. The few things I added are barely perceivable and not hardly noticable. They all blend together to ENHANCE the flavor, they don't change it. So, if you want to brine one and put some spices in it, unless you do something really really funky, I think you'll be fine using the juice to make gravy.
I'm going to do the big one for Thursday and probably let it soak longer than the 12 hrs this one soaked.
Overall, I give it thumbs up.
Sbeebe, let's have the root beer glaze ham recipe. Sounds good.
This is a true statment.
Now for another tidbit of info, I worked with a guy who's family had been raising turkey for many years.
I asked him if there was any difference between the Big Money birds, or the cheaper ones you can get on sale.
I was wondering if the Butterball people required them do special feed, etc, and he said no.
They sold turkey to anybody that wanted to buy them. Same bird, different wrapper.
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