Turkey Day wet brine questions

[JCBBQ]

I'm changing it up this year, gonna cook the bird on my Primo instead of the oven. Bc of this i'm open to any and all changes. Usually i'd brine the bird in water and salt for 24hrs then let it dry over night before cooking. I've come across several "recipes" online for different brines - citrus rinds, peppercorns, white sugar, brown sugar etc etc etc...

Question 1:
Isn't that all baloney? Nothing but the salt is going to effect the flavor right? And won't sugar just cause the skin to burn more quickly?


Question 2:
My unscientific theory in the past was that the salt would grab the water molecules and move into the meat. Creating both salt flavor and more moist meat. Is that false?

Question2A:
Will wet brining allow me to over shoot the desired internal temps for turkey and still maintain moist meat - or at least more moist than without the brine?

My plan is to wet brine as usual (unless there is a real flavor benefit from adding other ingredients), dry it over night, spatchcock it and then cook it indirect at 400 degrees until 165 in the breast and hopefully 175 in the thigh. If the skin is not crispy then i'm going to flip the bird over direct heat until the skin is good. I'll probably check the skin at 155 and decide then if I'm going to hit the skin w direct heat. My only concern is that when I do that w chicken the internal temps can shoot up pretty quick and cause a little bit of dry meat - but I don't wet brine a chicken, so I don't know if that would mitigate for the turkey.

Also, what's your best guess for how long this'll take if i'm cooking a 12-14lb bird. Thanks in advance!

[Huskee]

1. I use sugar in my wet poultry brines and it makes a great difference. Enough stays on the surface to make it yummy to me. Cook under 350 and there shouldn't be much issue. In fact, I've cooked 360 and didn't have much issue. I think the sugar burning issue comes from a sugary rub piled on teh surface of meat being cooked 350+. As far as the other ingredients, they probably make a little difference just like the sugar will, since we know they don't penetrate like salt does, but enough may cling to make it noticeable, who knows until you try.

2. I don't think so with turkey breast, but perhaps a little elsewhere. Turkey breast is inherently dry, like a brisket flat. I'd try to keep that no higher than 160-165 max, after carryover, for best results. Many will tell you to inject the breasts, and although I haven't done it yet I see the value in it and plan to on my next one, FWIW.

400 is mighty high, but not unheard of. Expect dark skin, it'll likely shrink a lot, but should be crispy. A 12-14lb bird at 325 is a good 2.5hrs, so at 400 my guess is it might be more like 1.5-2, hard to say w/o having done it myself though.

[EdF]

Well, here's a traditional style stuffed bird method I got to after quite a few years of cooking them. It's a bit fussy, so you may not want to go this way. But the results are consistently awesome. Understand that I had some spousal constraints like: gravy from the drippings, and the stuffing has to get the dripping in the bird, and the bird has to be "cooked".

Should be directly adaptable to the Primo.

I wrote this up for a friend a bunch of years ago. These days I'd probably spatchcock it if I were doing one, but we lack the company where we're living, and then there's the matter of the stuffing.

===

Suggest you get a bird 20lb or less if it's going into the Egg. You can

try Mad Max's Turkey at http://www.nakedwhiz.com/madmaxturkey.htm




This is a big favorite among eggers. Haven't tried it myself.




Good to check whether your setup will fit ahead of time. The one I find

best involves platesetter, a low-sided roasting pan you can fit into the

egg, and the grid. This year's went more or less like this:




21 lb free-range turkey




Prep (brining is optional):




Double-recipe of "Basic Meat Brine" or "Apple-brined turkey" from the Big

Green Egg recipe book (http://www.nakedwhiz.com/WiseOneRecipes.pdf.




Brine for about 24 hours (seems right from my experience). We use a huge

stainless pot for this, but you can use a large food grade plastic bag

that you set in some kind of container.




Remove from brine, pat dry, let sit in fridge uncovered for another 24

hours (seems to help the skin crisp up).




====

Cook day:




This year the whole process from laying the fire through making gravy took

5-1/2 hours, and I was moving slowly. Smaller turkey will take less time.




----

Prep including the fire was about an hour and a half at a leisurely pace:




(optional) I prepare a "dry" stuffing - no liquid in it initially.

Generally, it's ground pork or sausage, good sized cubes of bread and

herbs, mixed together in a big pot and cooked in butter until it mixes up

well. This then goes into the oven covered at 325 while the turkey is

cooking outside. More later. I didn't count stuffing making into the

5-1/2 hours. Takes me an hour or so to put it together. I can give you a

recipe if you want, but I'll bet you have one or more.




Put the giblets in a stock pot and simmer slowly before starting the

fire. Parsley, sage, thyme, bay leaf, a little salt, and pepper - the

usual drill. Some people think the liver makes the gravy bitter - I use

it.




Simultaneous with building fire:




Salt and pepper inside of turkey. Toss in a halved lemon and halved onion

with skin on, and a bundle of herbs, if you like (remove all before

stuffing).




20 minutes to a half-hour before starting to cook put a plastic bag with

ice cubes on breast. This helps equalize breast and dark meat cooking.




Slather outside with oil, or better, butter. (Recent note: oil rubbed into the meat under the skin seems to give the crispest outcome, but the taste of butter is hard to argue against).




Butter a piece or two of bread on both sides, put in the roasting pan, and

lay the bird breast down on it. This prevents ripping the skin.




If you did rip the skin, put some cheesecloth over the section where bare

meat is exposed, and slather well with melted butter. Remove the

cheesecloth a half hour or so before the end of final cooking.




Fire:




Make sure the firebox is clean. Load charcoal up to the middle of the

fire ring. Let it burn for a while to get past white smoke phase. Put

plate setter on, legs up before getting up to initial temp of 400. Just

before putting in the bird, add a few sticks of apple or similar wood

(amount depends on how smokey you want it - 3 1" thick by 3"-4" long

sticks was subtlely smokey).




----

Initial cook (1-1/2 hours):




Put the grid over the plate setter, put the roasting pan on top of it.

Check to make sure the thermometer won't break the skin when you close the

top. If your egg is like mine, it's probably hotter towards the back, so

put the legs facing towards the hinge.




Close the top and throttle the egg down to 325. Total cook for this part

is 1-1/2 hours. You can melt some butter with herbs in it (eg thyme,

sage, etc) and baste every 20 minutes or so. Once the butter is gone, the

pan drippings are good for it. (late note: basting is completely optional in a kamado, and probably elsewhere as well).




Cook stuffing covered in oven about an hour at 325 while this is going on.




----

Stuffing and turning (~40 minutes at a leisurely pace):




Take turkey off and bring inside, but leave egg going. Remove stuffing

from oven, but leave oven going.




Let it cool enough so you can work with it.




Remove the pieces of bread from the pan. Stuff the bird. Lay it breast

up in the pan.




You'll probably have more stuffing than needed for the bird. Add some

white wine to moisten it a bit or some of the pan drippings (wine turns

out less greasy and you don't have to defat the drippings now). Put it in the oven for about an hour.




---

Final cook (this time it was 1:50; it can take as little as an hour for

smaller birds)




Put the bird back in as before, with legs towards the back. Shut the top

and have a beer or something. Continue basting. I started checking

doneness with an instant thermometor at about 1:25. Shoot for 180 at the

thigh (or the loose drumstick method) and 165 at the breast.




Pull the bird and let it cool while you make the gravy.




----

About a half hour for cool down and gravy (but nothing else is ever ready,

so it's usually longer - no harm).




Typical pan gravy. Skim off the fat, add flour (first) and white wine to

drippings, maybe some shallots, the cut-up giblets and stock from

earlier. Simmer to desired consistency.




----




That's it. I've done variations on this for years now. Always comes up

excellent.

[JCBBQ]

WOW!! Thank you for this!

[EdF]

There're actually a few upsides to the apparent complexity, like getting out of the kitchen so you don't have to chop veggies, and the ability to chill on adult beverages through the process, and if you have relatives you'd rather not interact with, you can always go check the temps. ;-)

And at the end, you're the hero!

I generally draft a relative for the carving, as an honorific.

[scrowner]

I did wet brines for years. Even after reading the recipe for The Ultimate Smoked Turkey I still stuck to my guns. I spent days screwing around with it. I only used "fresh un-basted turkeys" (funny how long it takes to thaw a "fresh turkey") and I tried many different additions to the brine. Finally I came up with the perfect recipe and procedure. Everybody raved about "Scotts smoked turkey. Some even drove hundreds of miles through snow choked mountain passes. everything was as it should be.

Then I stumbled onto AMAZINGRIBS.COM. OH THE BLASPHEMY....dry brine my arse. I didn't give in easily. Last year I cooked 5 different turkeys with as many different brines just to prove I was right. (everybody said they were great but I could tell they were getting tired of turkey). Finally I gave in and tried it MEATHEADS way. I had a frozen turkey somebody gave me. I was going to give it to the homeless shelter because I only use fresh turkeys, but I thought "what the heck I'll give it a try". I followed the recipe for The Ultimate Smoked Turkey as closely as I could. (I tend to like to do my own thing). It was a tremendous hit. Even the people who were sick of turkey loved it. (the same people who have raved about "Scotts smoked turkey" for years)

This year I have been given a very clear directive from the 20 some odd people coming to dinner (who do they think they are anyway...I'm the cook) "Do this years turkey like the last one you did last year" So I now own several frozen turkeys which will be prepared, as my family puts it "meathead style.....