I Can Has Brine Bucket, Me

[akirlu]

OOOOOOOO-o-o-kay, then. Thanksgiving. I remember this. Vaguely. It's been yonks since I was responsible for the bird.

Woke up spontaneously at six, despite persistent darkness. Watered alpha cat minor. Fed supreme alpha cat major. Unmolded the big lumps of incompletely frozen ice(next time, put them in the freezer earlier), finished making up the Alton Brown brine, washed (and plucked) the bird, dumped the turkey in the brine bath all in a 5-gallon paint bucket. Fed the dog. Walked the dog. Came back in and decided the best cool place to put the whole brine concoction would be on the back stoop, with an inverted wok lid on top of it to keep out the undesirables. So, did that. Now, we wait roughly six hours. Luckily, we don't have a lot of large, turkey-stealing predators in these parts, but there is no way I was hauling 2-3 gallons of brine and 14 pounds of turkey down the cellar stairs (and back up again) just to make sure the brine stayed sufficiently chill. So back porch it is.

Eventually, I should probably put real clothes on.

Circa 9:00 I need to turn the bird in the brine. Around 11:00 I'll start pre-heating the oven and prepping the aromatics for the inside of the bird. 11:15 shove bird in oven and dash off to collect Lise at Tukwila. 11:45 turn oven down from blast furnace initial phase and put little tin foil hat on bird. Then coast for 2-2.5 hours. Around 2:00 wake Hal. (Luckily he got home at 7:00 this morning and is already in bed.)

I think I can do this, as long as the train is not late by a sufficiently wrong amount that I miss turning down the oven for too long.

I mean, I'm not including the making harose(t/s) or the sweet corn bread pudding or the scalloped potatoes, or the cranberry dipping sauce, but all of those are to some degree optional depending on how ambitious I feel. So I think I can do this. But boy am I out of practice.

Comments

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

You can do it!

I'm drunk. Only way I'm going to survive thanksgiving in Indiana.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

By now you're presumably on the hangover-laden return trip. Yes, as it turns out, I could do it. The bird was probably the best I've ever made, ridiculously juicy and moist, without being salty at all. That's made of win by my lights.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Ah, Alton Brown. We watched a few of his shows at my friends' while the turkey finished cooking. He drove me nuts. I already know about the science of cooking and I don't like Monty Python.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

To each their own. I usually pick up something useful that I didn't previously know, and the brine recipe produced a bird that was exceptionally juicy without being particularly salty at all, and the no-baste approach was quick and produced an excellent skin without all the usual potheration. Without question, the easiest and best turkey I've ever done, so I'm sold.

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

I did the Alton Brown brine and cooking method for the first time this year, and it was terrific - best turkey I've ever done.

But NO WAY would I even walk outside with the bird in a 500-degree oven.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

As it happens, I decided to wait until after I got back from the train to put the bird in the oven. Much safer choice.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I keep hearing from marykaykare about Cook's Illustrated and her love of same, so I expect I'll have to subscribe eventually, though if they had an online subscription with an archive that would be ideal from my perspective.

As to dinner, well, I only did the bird and a couple of dressings -- the rest was supplied by other contributors -- so it's not nearly as ambitious as doing the full folderoll. I haven't done that in...decades. But the success of the turkey gives me enough confidence that I may well try to tackle duck a la Alton Brown next. Especially with a new Hong Kong market opened in the neighborhood, I'm betting I can get a steady supply of duck.

Right now I'm envious of anyone who can manage successful baking. The best that can be said of my current oven is that it's better than the one that came with the house. The present one works, hence the better part, but thermostat runs cold, so I have to guess at how high to set the oven to get the temperature I want. This makes producing even a non-burnt, non-raw batch of scones way more challenging than it ought to be.