Another Brine Recipe, Another Success

a stick

Cooked a 13# turkey and wow, this bird was great. I suppose a gravy traditionalist may want to use less brine drippings and more stock. We cheated and used a gravy base from Williams Sonoma.[p]Turkey was brined in a 3.5 gal bucket and kept in a cooler filled with ice. This recipe was in the Kansas City Star (home of your 10-1 Kansas City Chiefs). I may a couple adjustments, my version is as follows:
2 gal (5 cans concentrated + 15 cans water) OJ
1.5 c sea salt
1.5 c brown sugar
1 onion sliced (original calls for 2 bunches green onions)
6 crushed garlic cloves
2 cinnamon sticks, smashed with hammer
2 TB candied ginger
2 TB cumin (original calls for one bunch cilantro)
2 TB anise seed
2 TB cloves
2 TB red pepper flakes
Combine it all in a BIG stockpot. Bring to a boil then simmer for 45 minutes. Cool brine to room temp - I set mine out on the patio for about an hour. Outside temp was around 40, brine got down to 80. Dunk bird headfirst and breast down into the brine at 9:30 pm Tuesday, out at 7 am Thursday. Dried bird and set on Turkey sitter filled with 1 can Coors, .5 c of cider vinegar and a few shakes of garlic pepper. Rub turkey with olive oil and cover with all-purpose rub.
On the egg at 8am, no ceramic mass, 325 temp. Remote probe (in breast) said the bird was 41 degrees. Temp rose quickly them platued around 130. Started creeping up again and was 170 at 12:15 pm. Off the egg, rested 20 minutes.
It was superb - couldn't be better. The OJ really gave it a distinctive, wonderful flavor.
The brine took a long time to make, but hell. Thanksgiving only comes once a year.
Happy Egging - a stick

a stick

Oops, forgot something. Put tom turkey on the sitter then placed sitter and bird in a disposable aluminum pan to keep drips outta the fire.

Lance

a stick,
Great Post! Glad to hear that it was such a great success. Two questions, how did the color of your bird come out and did you use a drip pan with liquis in it?[p]Also, your right the brine does take a while to make, but it's much less time than it takes to cook and unbrined bird.

a stick

Lance,[p]Thank you - the bird's skin color was golden brown for the most part, it did blacken around the neck and top of the breast. I think that was due to the sugar in the rub. The meat was regular ol' turkey colors (no orange meat to match the orange juice). I didn't mention that I also used 2 chunks of sassafras so I got a decent little smoke ring too.[p]I used a ceramic turkey sitter filled with liquid so the bird was on the throne similar to beer-can chicken. Then the whole contraption sat in a disposable aluminum pan (no liquid in the pan) to catch liquids and drips.