Memoirs of a Good Tasting Turkey

Since my annual Thanksgiving Turkey turned out tasty last year (I can only remember one year when it turned out a little dry) I thought I might finally try and record my recipe. Here is a short list of what you'll need:

20-25lb Turkey (the past 2 years was from Foster Farms from Costco but prior to that I used Butterball turkeys).

BRINE:
All spice corns - 3 tblsp
Pepper corns - 3 tblsp
Powdered ginger - 2 tblsp
Brown sugar - 1 cup
Bay leaf - 4 leaves
Salt - 3/4 cup
Chicken stock - 4 big cans (I can't remember the size, 32-35 oz?)

TURKEY CAVITY STUFFING:
Carrots - 3 medium sized
Celery - 3 stalks
Onion - 1 medium sized
Apples - 3 medium sized
Garlic - 8 cloves
Cinnamon sticks - 2 sticks

RUB:
Rosemary - 2 tblsp
Thyme - 2 tblsp
Sage - 2 tblspn
Savory - 2 tblsp
Paprika - 2 tblsp
Brown sugar - 1 1/2 cup
Powdered Ginger - 2 tblsp
Butter - 2 sticks

Red Wine - 2 cups

Cookware:
Baking Pan
Backing Rack that fits in your baking pan
X Large Ziplock Bag for brining - 2 bags to double bag in case of leakage
Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil

Making the Brine:

Place all the brine ingredients in a big pot and bring it to a boil. Do this ahead of time (perhaps a day ahead) because it's going to take awhile to cool down a whole pot full of liquid. While the brine is cooling you can unpack your turkey. Take out all the innards and wash the bird inside and out. Pat dry the turkey and set it aside. Gather your stuffing ingredients (except for the cinnamon sticks which you'll use after the brining) and chop them into chunks - they don't need to be pretty or small, you just want to extract all the nice juices and aromas from these ingredients. Placed the chopped ingredients into a bowl and toss them like a salad.




Now take your X Large sized Ziplock bag and spread it out on an aluminum pan for support when you move the full bag. I recommend double bagging the brine and turkey because there's always a chance of leakage. Now, place your turkey inside the bag and then jam as much of the chopped stuffing into the turkey's abdominal cavity. If it doesn't all fit, just toss the rest of the ingredients into the bag. Carefully pour the cooled brine into the bag. If you have the space you can make extra brine and completely submerge your turkey in a bucket or something but my place is limited in space so my turkey ends up only 2/3rds submerged, in which case I rotate the turkey in the brine every 3-4 hours or so. Seal the Ziplock bag, making sure to expel all the excess air - expelling the air also helps submerge your turkey in the brine. If you can, place that whole bagged set up in your refrigerator. You can place it in a cooler with plenty of ice and ice packs but I get paranoid about bacteria so now-a-days I make space in my fridge. So again, if the turkey is not fully submerged then rotate it every 4 hours or so. On the whole you'll want to brine your turkey for at least 12-16 hours.

Prepping the Herb Rub:

Cooking big is not always the most elegant of crafts, so again take all your herb rub ingredients (except for the butter) and dump them into a bowl. For the butter, you'll want to microwave it for a minute, just enough so that it's soft enough to whip with a fork. Now dump the butter on top of your herbal mix and fold it all into a nice gooey aromatic mush.

After your turkey has soaked for enough hours, pull it from the brine and remove the stuffing from the cavity and set it aside. Wash and pat dry the turkey then set it aside. Take your brine and drain it into a large pot and boil it (you can always do this after you've taken care of your turkey). Toss in the turkey guts and gizzard you pulled from the packaging for additional flavoring. You'll know your turkey got a good soak if you see plenty of brown foam form in the brine as you boil it - I believe this is the extracted turkey blood congealing. Once the brine has boiled, cool it then strain it through a collender lined with cheese cloth. Bottle this liquid and use it to flavor and salt everything from mash potatoes to stuffing to gravy. But use it sparingly as it is salty and the capitol crime in cooking is over salting food.

Anyhoo, back to the turkey. I would say most people prefer to dry roast there turkeys but I just can't stand the possibility of drying out my bird, so I like to steam my turkey. Steaming a turkey doesn't produce a picture friendly bird like dry roasting, but it ensures that the meat isn't dry. In fact I should warn you that brining and steaming can sometimes produce meat that looks a little pink but as long as you cook the turkey long enough you can rest assured that the meat is not raw, it's just very moist and succulent. I take heavy duty aluminum foil (don't use the regular stuff) and cut two very long strips (long enough to fold over the turkey without touching the turkey) and place them crossed inside the roasting pan. Then I place the roasting rack inside the pan (sometimes I will fold a thick padding of small aluminum squares to cushion the corners of the rack so that it doesn't pierce the outer foil. Now place the turkey on the roasting rack. The roasting rack elevates the whole bird and prevents the turkey from drowning in its own juices - if this happens you'll have boiled turkey instead of steamed turkey. From here, take 8-12 cloves of garlic and strategically insert them under the skin around the turkey. I don't recommend piercing the meat to insert them, just find openings in the skin and massage the little bulbs into various points.

Grab your bowl of herb rub and take a handful of the stuff and rub the inner cavity - like I said, it's not the most elegant of crafts. Now take the stuffing from the brining phase and shove them back into the cavity, really packing the stuff in. Take two cinnamon sticks and insert them into the cavity as well. Now for the really messy stuff. Take handfuls of the herb rub and start smearing it all over the turkey. Try and get gobs of the herbs under the skin where you can, along the breast and legs. This mix will melt and infuse into parts of the meat where as the portions outside the skin will not penetrate as well. The rub will inevitably fall off much of the slippery skin but this is OK. Now that the dirty work is done, take a swig of wine for yourself and then pour some into the turkey's cavity area. You don't want to pour over the turkey or else you'll just end up rinsing off all the herb rub.



Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Fold the flaps of foil up the sides of the turkey and crimp the edges. Crimp all the way up to the top and crimp the top so that you end up with a rectangular "tent" around the turkey. You don't want the foil to be hugging the turkey, you want space all around for the steam to rise and circulate all over the meat. Basically a 25lb turkey will cook in less than 5 hours (steaming cooks the turkey faster than roasting), but really the best way to check is to use a meat thermometer you stick in the thickest part of the breast. You'll want an internal tempurature of about 160 degrees Fahrenheit.

When the turkey has finished baking, pull the whole thing out and let it sit for a good 15-30 minutes so that it can cool. Cutting into the turkey while it's still steaming hot will dry out the meat prematurely. I recommend using an electric knife to cut nice even slices. Again, the meat can often have a pinkish tone to it, but as long as the internal temperature reaches 160, you can be assured it is cooked. You can always take your sliced turkey and stick it in the oven to brown the meat before serving. In fact a little oven time really brings out the meaty flavor but be sure not to over do it or you'll dry out the meat. Next time around I'll fill you in on how to take the drippings and cook up a killer gravy - my sister lives for the gravy. But for now, I have my own turkey to tend to. Happy eating.