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I've used Alton Brown's brine recipe for the past two Thanksgivings and gotten rave reviews. In fact I may have been relegated to the "Turkey Cooker" :( The sa
by __mharrison__ 14y ago
I've used Alton Brown's brine recipe for the past two Thanksgivings and gotten rave reviews. In fact I may have been relegated to the "Turkey Cooker" :(
The salting method looks interesting, but I'm liking Sous Vide right now and will probably do that next time around. One bath for white meat, another for dark. Should be super moist and not lose flavor.
- tptacek 14y agoCooking low temp mitigates the brining requirement because there is little chance of overcooking the meat. Also, the juices from the meat are going to be held next to it for the whole cook, and none of it will evaporate. You don't need to brine a low temp turkey. Curing (what Kenji Lopez-Alt calls "dry brining") works just fine with a low temp cook. It's also faster. Alton Brown's turkey brine is chock-a-block full of aromatics and spices. Kenji Lopez-Alt and the Serious Eats crew looked into this a year or so back; those flavorings do impact the very outer layer of the meat (esp. if you don't rinse thoroughly) but don't work their way into the meat; their molecules are just too large to make it through cell membranes. I brine/cure with salt and sugar and nothing else now and haven't noticed much of a difference.
- jon-wood 14y agoWe had Sous Vide turkey at our company Christmas dinner last year, and was the best turkey I've ever tasted. Wonderfully moist, with a texture more like a nicely cooked pork chop than turkey, and bursting with flavour.