(Additional recipes – Stuffing,  Sweet Bad Ass Pecan Pie,  Sweet Spud-Peanut Pie)

     Two days before Thanksgiving probably ain’t within the ideal time frame for dishing out Holiday cooking advice. Then again, it’s rare for most of us to not to wind up in some sort of last minute crunch. We scramble for ideas on a better feast. We lose sleep in terror of having to smile through mouthfuls of dried out turkey breast that will suck the moisture out of our mouths like kitty litter. We gnash our teeth over lack of refrigerator space and curse heaven for providing us with so many loved ones but only blessing us with one lousy oven to cook for all of them.

   Even if you’ve got no obligation beyond bringing a dish to somebody else’s place you probably hope what you’ll make will be a standout. Something that your fellow guests will chatter about and will help the hosts feel awful about the desiccated bird they just served you. Of course, being in charge of a single item can make it easier to put it off to the very last minute. You’ll find yourself screwed trying to locate ground veal for the country pâté you promised to create.

   With that in mind, my first Holiday Tip is this: Never promise anything. Either commit to nothing specific or just give your word on simpler dish. And when in doubt, or the clock runs out, just bring booze. Something nice – everybody always appreciates the person who brings the good wine or interesting beer.

   Now, for those in charge of the main meal, let’s cover the turkey. First off – you have to brine it. The idea of brining, especially for holiday turkeys, has caught on so much it almost seems unnecessary to bring it up here. But there are still some hold-outs. My mom thinks I’m nuts and others have questioned why I’d go through the all the trouble for one meal. Well, I do because 1) brining is too easy a process to brush off and 2) Turkeys are already low on my list of edible fowl – a hair below bony little squabs and a notch or so above nasty fucking pheasants – so if I put the effort into cooking a gargantuan buzzard there’d better be a payoff in taste and moisture. So, unless the sensation of crumbly, dehydrated turkey gives you some sort of nostalgic comfort you need a bird that’s seen time in salty water.

   (There is, however, another way to get a decent turkey without brining – especially helpful to know if started turkey shopping on Thanksgiving morning – and that’s to go buy a fresh Butterball or some other “self-basting” turkey. They come out pretty decent because the Butterball folks already brined the bird for you. And they’ll charge 3 to 4 times as much for having done so)

   Now, let me give you a basic brining recipe here. I’ll follow it with some tips and/or variations and, should you feel like lingering, a little bit about what exactly brine does to food. It’ll be almost like a science lesson – minus all the science and facts and junk…

Basic Brine – You can use this for Turkey, Chicken, Pork, Fish, Cucumbers…

1 cup non-iodized* salt (make it a rounded cup for Kosher salt)

½ cup sugar (I like packed brown sugar for turkey)

1 gallon water

* Iodized table salt will impart an unsavory iodine flavor to your food. It’s especially nasty in fish.   

1. Dissolve salt and sugar in water completely. If you were curing meats I’d say boil it all first. But for overnight turkey brines you can just stir it until it’s clear.** 
2. Stick the bird in the brine so that it’s fully submerged.
3. Stick it in the fridge or someplace very cool – I prefer at least 24 hours for a big bird, but even an 8 hour dunk while you sleep is going to give you a far better turkey than you started with.
4. Remove the bird, give it a quick rinse and then dry it with paper towels. Season and cook. 

** I’ve read many recipes which suggest you try floating an egg in the solution to make sure you got the salt/water ratio correct. I suggest that if you can’t figure out what a cup and a gallon are you oughta just take the family out for Chinese on Thursday.

 Spices, Herbs, Flavorings – There are countless ideas on what sort of seasonings ought to go into brine. And while you may come across all sorts of cool ideas most are pointless. Turkey flesh, like the meat of all animals, is comprised of cells which are designed to keep most things out. Salt, which dissociates into sodium and chloride ions in water, passes readily into meat. Sugar just clings to stuff and helps balance out the salt taste. Much of everything else won’t get past the skin or surface of the meat, especially in a single day of brining.

   This isn’t to say you can’t try a seasoned brine – you just have to bear in mind what you’re up against. Concentrate the amount of seasoning  – if you want a peppery bird put lots of ground pepper in the solution; a tablespoon or two of whole peppercorns just ain’t gonna cut it. For garlic, crush a whole mess of cloves into the brine. And forget fresh herbs – they’ll make the brine aromatic but they’ll do little for the bird.

   You’ll get the best flavoring results after brining. Rinse and dry the bird, then rub oil and seasonings all over (and under) the skin and let it sit for half an hour before roasting.

 Hints 

• Bags – You can save space and brine by putting the turkey in a heavy duty plastic bag – like a large yard bag or one of them XL Ziplocs for pillows and such. Double up on bags if you’re anxious about leaks.  Put the bag in a large pot or a cooler, place the bird inside, pour 2 gallons of brine in, then draw up the bag around it and tie it. The bag should look more like a limp water balloon than a turkey. If it doesn’t add more brine.
• Coolers, Buckets - This time of year I can usually get away with keeping a brining bird in a bucket in the garage. Coolers come in very handy when T-Week temps get a little warm. They’re handy overall, actually, saving you precious fridge room.
• Perfect Skin – Unfortunately brining louses up the chances for a nice crisp peel to the finished bird. You can counter this effect by rubbing the skin with lemon and more salt before cooking or making the brine lightly acidic. Last year I used a brine that was 1/3 apple cider. Didn’t make an appley turkey, but the skin condition did improve.  

 

 Cooking. Let’s start with how NOT to cook a turkey: 

 

• Don’t Stuff It. A stuffed bird means longer cooking times. You’ll only overcook the white meat while waiting for the inner thighs and stuffing itself to get hot. Make your stuffing in a separate pan and drizzle it with turkey drippings later.

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  Don’t Truss It: – Moving along the theme above, a turkey with its legs spread-eagled is going to cook quicker and more evenly than one stitched and bound in some unnatural S&M pose.

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  Don’t Cook it Forever at a Low Temperature – Conventional wisdom has people sticking turkeys in the oven at 6 AM to eat at noon. But that’s because, conventionally, everyone has been stuffing and trussing the freaking bird. A long time and a lower temp was necessary to get a thoroughly cooked turkey without burning the crap out of the skin.

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  Flip the Turkey Around a Lot? – If you like ripped skin and turkey that looks like it was beaten with golf clubs then knock yourself out.

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  • Then How the Hell Do I Cook a Goddamned Turkey, Frank?

      High heat and quick, baby, quick! Seriously folks, after a good a good brine, or even without one, set the oven to 425 and you’ll have an evenly cooked turkey in a hell of a lot less time. Even for heavyweights of 20lbs or more you’ll be eatin’ drumsticks in about 2 hours.                                   

 
   Okay, So back to brines…we’ve got the system down but exactly why does it all work? Is it a complex chemical reaction or is it merely the hand of Jesus who, as a coastal dude, always had a thing for salt water? I started to read an article last year that delved into the microbiology of the brining business, without so much as a nod to the intelligent design people.  Grand stuff about cytoplasm and Golgi apparatus and whatnot that was beyond uninteresting. Unnecessary research too, it would seem. Too arcane for anyone to give a crap about. 
  
The best way to think about the brining process is in the simple idea of osmosis. You have a bunch of cells with a small amount of salt within them. Suddenly they’re all surrounded by very salty water. Now water and salt are a lot like Billy Paul and Mrs. Jones…they got a thing goin’ on. Water is a pretty gregarious substance and it likes to share what it’s got when it runs into other water, in this case the fluid within turkey cells. Pretty soon all the water inside and out of the cell membranes arrive at an equilibrium. All the water everywhere posseses a similar proportion of salt.

 

Salt itself is a bit more possessive of water. Once it gets some it’s slow to let go. So even when you stick all those turkey cells in a hot oven the salt is going to cling to its mositure, tightening up all the pores in the cellular membrane. It might even rough up the water a bit and demoralize it so it’s afraid to exist without the rough caress of salt…

All right, that went tangential quickly. But I hope you get the gist of the idea. It may even be entirely incorrect. But who cares? You’ll be eating extra juicy birds soon enough.