Brining My Bird

I started doing this a little over a year ago when I tried bining my bird for the first time at Thanksgiving. And I liked it so much I keep doing it, whether I'm deep frying the bird as I was back then, or roasting it in the oven the old fashioned way. In fact, I've since done a lot of different meats brined, and they are absolutely terrific!

The basic brine consists of :

• 2 litres water
• 3/4 cup salt
• 3/4 cup sugar, brown sugar, honey, molasses, maple syrup or whatever you like
• 1/4 tsp fresh ground pepper
• 1 medium onion, diced
• other herbs and spices to taste

Mix enough of this to cover the bird. I use a standard 5 US gallon / 19 litre white plastic bucket from Home Depot / Rona. They sell them for mixing paint, but they are standard HDPE and are food grade.

As shown in the picture below, some generous sprigs of rosemary is one of my favorite ways to brine. Though this time around I did not have any on hand so in the whole bucket I mixed in about 1/4 cup dried oregano and another 1/4 cup dried thyme. I also used brown sugar this time. Often in the summer when we are having our Brew 'n' Q backyard parties I'll use honey because a good friend and his daughter are hypo-glycemic and processed sugar really disagrees with them.

For frozen birds I go directly from the freezer to the brining bucket, without thawing it first. The bird thaws in the brine, and the frozen bird helps keep the whole thing cool if you don't have a fridge to keep it in. Normally I do have room in one of my keg fridges for my bucket, but this time around I tried it simply in a cool corner of the basement. I wrapped the bucket in a blanket and monitored the temperature of the brine and it stayed below 40F (fridge temp) the whole 40 hours I had it brining. More than 24 hours can be a bit too briny for some people, so your first time around you may want to halt it there. I'm personally not big on really salty foods but somehow the turkey brined more than 24 hours suits me fine.

We had a 7.7 kg / 17 lb bird this time around, and it took exactly 4 hours @325F to cook it to perfection. There was quite a bit more food left to prepare when the bird came out of the oven, so I wrapped it in foil and tossed a fleece blanket over it. About 75 minutes later when the rest of the supper was ready, the bird was still piping hot.

I collected about 750ml / 3 cups of pan drippings from the bird, and used them to make a very yummy gravy. I'll follow this up shortly with a recipe.