Opinions from the gallery

[Kilroy238]

By request of her exalted highness (my 12 yo daughter, anyone else have that problem? LOL), I'm doing a turkey this weekend. By coincidence, I just recently picked up some Kosmos Dirty Bird on the advice of my uncle and have been wanting to give it a go.

Nothing special about this bird. It's just a regular ol' butterball that comes wet brined. I stuck one in our freezer when they were cheap at thanksgiving.

The way I was planning on doing this bird was to spatchcock, dry brine for a day, inject, finally some DB. Smoked on my PBC at 225 for an hour then up to 325-350 to finish the cook.

I've never had an over salty bird dry brining a factory pre brined bird but I know some say it's too salty so I guess results will vary.

Now I was happy with my plan until I saw the main ingredient of DB is of course salt. So now I am worried about over-salting.

I tasted the DB and it wasn't overly salty but I'm still worried that my regular dry brining and the using DB might be a problem. So I was considering just using DB to dry brine. So now I am in a quandary.

Should I just stick with the original plan, maybe dry brine as usual but use the salt sparingly or should I just dry brine with the DB?

I'd appreciate any thoughts on this.

TIA

[Steve B]

Use the Dirty Bird as your dry brine. That's what I do if using a rub with a high salt content.

[Texas Larry]

+1 ^

[Donw]

Huskee posted a rule of thumb about brining/dry brining a while back
Look at the Nutrition label:
200-300mg sodium, brine as if it weren't salted at all
300-400mg sodium, brine lightly.
400+mg, maybe skip brining.

[Kilroy238]

That's good to know, Thanks. My bird is 200 mg and the rub is 150 so should I combine those numbers for 350mg and dry brine very lightly or do a full dry brine as well as the rub?

[Donw]

I tagged Huskee so hopefully he will comment on your question. It seems to me a light brine isn’t going to hurt at all, I used his rule and did a full dry brined and everything turned out well, but I can’t say whether the rub I used had the same salt content as yours.

[klflowers]

I stopped brining butterball turkeys after I did just what you said I dry brined one and then used a salty rub. Now I don't dry brine and I don't worry about the rubs too much, or I use the rub as the brine.

[Kilroy238]

Do you happen to know how salty your bird was from the beginning? Using the guide from Huskee that DonW reposted if I'm understanding correctly since my bird only has 200mg of sodium I should do a light dry brine at least.

[klflowers]

Kilroy238, it was a standard commodity turkey so something like a 7 or 8% injection, I believe. I iused an off the shelf rub, I think it was Lawry's poultry, and it is pretty salty.

[Huskee]

I'm thinking you'll be plenty fine using it as your dry brine. 200 on the label is bare minimum so I wouldn't worry. Sounds like one of those things you'll have to wing, write it down, and make a note of what to do next time. If you happened to be really worried I would suggest buy a cheap whole chicken (to keep the thickness more similar instead of thinner individual pieces) and do a test.

[HawkerXP]

How are you controlling your PBC temps? A fan?

[Santamarina]

If you’re sold on that rub just use it as the dry brine. However, that’s why I got out of commercial rubs years ago. My turkeys always get Simon & Garfunkel rub - the free side of AR has a ton of killer rubs! When I make my own I never add salt so I can properly dry brine.

[Kilroy238]

How are you controlling your PBC temps? A fan?

I use a bbq guru dyna-q. Had some connection problems in the beginning after getting it but that seems like it's all been sorted out through firmware works great now and I love that thing.

[Kilroy238]

Thanks for all the input guys I appreciate it.

I went ahead and did my dry brine as well as the rub with some Creole butter injection . It wasn't salty at all and came out incredibly juicy.


I thought it was great, my kids enjoyed it but my mom didn't care for it but only because it didn't have that "traditional" turkey taste.

So I guess the next one will be for her with more of a traditional sage Rosemary time rub with injection.