It All Starts With the Turkey

The first thing that I have to do to get my Thanksgiving dinner ready is to start with the Turkey.  For the last several years, we have been cooking our turkeys on our Weber kettle grill.  It adds such a nice smokey flavor!  At Thanksgiving time we always cook 2 big turkeys, since we love to have plenty of leftovers and also because we usually have such a large crowd for dinner.  Throughout the years, depending on what was going on in our lives, we have had vegetarian Thanksgivings and no turkey or a combination of vegetarian & carnivorous.  The year we experimented with tofurkey was a HUGE mistake, but fortunately that was also a combo year.  That was the year that I learned to avoid vegetarian "meat". 

Many, many years ago we started the tradition of inviting what we fondly call "The Orphans" over for Thanksgiving dinner.  Actually, an even earlier tradition was for our entire family to go over to the local soup kitchen and help with Thanksgiving dinner there and then sit down and eat with everyone.  Then it morphed into David & the kids going over and delivering dinners to the home-bound, while I stayed home and cooked up our meal -- that's when it sort of morphed into inviting the orphans.  The orphans are those who we work with at Habitat and have families that live elsewhere.  It's either too far or too expensive to travel home for such a short time, so we invited them to spend Thanksgiving with our family.  I have a very fond & funny memory of that first time with orphans & a vegetarian Thanksgiving -- will tell that story later.  Anyway, this year ALL of our kids, spouses & grandchild will be here -- that's 10 including David & me and then about 10 or more others will be joining us.  Sometimes, when our kids were in college, they invited friends who weren't going to be traveling to their families.  And now this year, there will also be friends now graduated from college who still want to come and also a friend from one of their jobs, plus, the Habitat crowd who have no where to go for Thanksgiving fellowship.


Anyway, starting with the turkey...Last year, we discovered brining -- makes a very moist & flavorful turkey!  So, now this has been added to our turkey cooking tradition.  We only cook turkey at holiday time -- 2 on Thanksgiving and one on Christmas Eve -- then again, if we have any holiday parties hosted at our house.  I always get BIG turkeys -- like 19 to 20+ pounds.  I am using 2 different brining recipes this year -- one is a pre-mixed kit that I found last night at the store.  It's all natural (no msg, preservatives, etc) and it uses some ingredients that I sort of wanted to experiment with -- like cranberries, apples, orange peel and juniper berries (never used these ever before!).  It also contains sea salt, peppercorns, garlic, brown sugar, sage, rosemary & thyme.  Another brining recipe I will use is one that uses apple juice and orange juice with Kosher salt, cloves, nutmeg and brown sugar.  I'll write these recipes up later.  You need to start a day in advance, since the turkeys need to soak in the brine for at least 10 hours.  We plan to eat at 1 pm tomorrow, so, I will need to get up early to drain the brine and stuff the turkeys and then David will have the grills ready to cook them.


Here is an Alton Brown video about brining.  Don't tell David, but I really enjoy Alton Brown -- I used to not like Alton's show, "Good Eats", because he spent so much time explaining the science behind his techniques and ingredients etc.  I thought he was goofy and it sort of insulted my instinctual and spiritual approach to cooking -- however, lately, not only do I think he is funny in a nerdy sort of way, but he really does explain scientifically what my soul & instincts have been telling me.  David would get way carried away with "I told you so" -- so please don't tell him.  I know he doesn't read my blog, so if he finds out, it will be one of you who tells him!!! (I will hunt you down and find you!)  Here is the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiSfKDiUavo&feature=player_embedded 


The brine recipe that I am using is called "Apple Spice Brine".  I don't generally follow recipes verbatim, so this is sort of what I did.  This was for the 23 pound turkey. 1 gallon apple juice (I also used up some pomegranate cider with apple, which was about 1 quart), 2 quarts orange juice, 3 cups Kosher salt, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 20 or so whole cloves, & almost 2 tablespoons of ground nutmeg.  I put all of these in a big pot and simmered until the salt & sugar were dissolved.  Then I added some cold ice water to cool it down.  I put the turkey in a huge brining bag (which I put in a large cooler) and poured the brine solution over it.  I then added some more ice water until the turkey was basically covered.  I think it was about another gallon+ of water.  I sealed  up the bag and then poured a bunch of ice on and around it to keep the turkey cold.  There is no room in any of my fridges for this.

The 19 lb. turkey I used the pre-mixed brine solids.  I added another cup of Kosher salt and some more dried rosemary and thyme and dissolved the salt & sugar in a gallon or so of simmering water, cooled it and did the same thing as above with the large brining bag in another cooler.  I added enough iced water to completely cover the turkey and then sealed up the bag and dumped ice all around the turkey and closed up the cooler.


I bought the brining bags over the internet about a month ago.  I also bought some smaller bags to brine a roast or chicken or whatever.  I thought that I might even try doing another corned beef in a brining bag.  You don't have to use these bags, but I like using them -- it keeps things neater and more contained.  I wash them out and re-use them over and over, until they start getting holes in them, so I get my money's worth. Then I either recycle them or my daughter uses them to make (crochet) grocery bags.


I will let these turkeys brine until tomorrow morning when I will rinse them off real good and stuff them and then we will cook on the grills.