I Can Has Brine Bucket, Me
Nov. 27th, 2008 07:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akirluOOOOOOOO-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.
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.
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