Turkey brines?

[Austin_]

When you brine a turkey- is it considered a marinade or is it something completely different? How do you make an appropriate brine for turkey? Everyone has there own opinion about what makes a good brine. I think it's like sugar, salt, peppercorns, herbs, honey, water, broth- or something like that, but I really have no idea the proper way to brine a turkey. Thanks!

[cookwithlove]

For the Brine
1 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 gal Vegetable stock
1 tbsp Black peppercorn
1/2 tbsp Allspices
1/2 tbsp Candied ginger
1 gal iced water

For the aromatics

1 red apple sliced
1/2 onion sliced
1 cinnamon stick
1 cup water
4 sprigs rosemary
6 leaves sage

canola oil

Combine all brine ingredients, except ice water, in a stockpot, and bring to a rapid boil. Stir to dissolve solids, then remove from the heat, cool to room temperature, and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled

Early on the day of cooking, (of late the night before) combine the brine and ice water in a clean 5-gallon bucket. Place thawed turkey breast side down in brine, cover, and refrigerate or set in cool area(like a basement)for 6 hours. Turn turkey over once, half way through brining.

A few minute before roasting, heat oven to 500 degrees. Combine the apple,onion, cinnamon stick, and a cup of water in a microwave safe dish and microwave on high for 5 minutes.

Remove bird from brine and rinse inside and out with cold water. Discard brine.

Place bird on roasting rack inside wide, low pan and pat dry with paper tower. Add strrped aromatics to cavity along with rosemary and sage. Tuck back wings and coat whole bird liberally with canola oil(or other neutral oil.

Roast on lowest level of the oven at 500 degrees F. for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and cover breast with double layer of aluminum foil, insert probe thermometer into thickest part of the breast and return to oven, reducing temperature to 350 degrees F. Set the thermoneter alarm(if available) to 161 degrees. A 14 to 16 pound bird should require a total of 2 to 21/2 hours of roasting. Let turkey rest, loosely covered for 15 minutes before carving.

Let me know the result, fine tune if improvement is needed to improve or make the recipe even better and with others.

Bon apetit!

[Austin_]

Thank you! Too bad thanksgiving just ended. I'll have to keep that in mind!

[castironchef]

Cookwithlove:

If you're going to block and copy a recipe from another source, you really should, at a minimum, give the source credit.

The recipe you posted on this thread is, word for word, Alton Brown's "Good Eats Roast Turkey."

[cookwithlove]

Thanks for pointing it out. i will in future.

[mudbug]

A brine is essentially salty water. Most basic brines contain salt and sugar.

A marinade technically contains acid from alcohol, vinegar, or citrus.

cookwithlove,

You can edit your post so that it attributes credit to the proper source.