Roasted Brined Turkey, November, 2008

As you may well know, we take food very seriously in this household. Mark was a former cook, and has spoiled me with his sublime Italian cooking. One of his culinary habits is precision, both in material selection, as well as in following process parameters. Some of his habit has soaked into my cooking style through osmosis. In this spirit, I have begun to write down recipes, so that I can learn and iterate upon them to satisfaction. Sometimes, a little bit of extra effort is required to set oneself apart from the ordinary!

In hopes of eventually perfecting my roasted turkey, and improving from the one I roasted in March, I will be recording the process of brining and roasting this Thanksgiving's 7.22 lbs turkey.

Brining
I did not use my redlined notes from the brining recipe from the "Joy of Cooking", which in retrospect was not a huge mistake since the "Joy" recipe calls for a 6 hour soak, instead of the overnight brining I performed for this turkey. This year I used an adaptation of Emeril Lagasse's brine recipe online:

1.5 gallons of water (24 cups)
3/4 cup of brown sugar (or golden sugar in my case)
1.5 cups of kosher salt (or 3/4 cups of table salt)
2-3 tbs dried rosemary

I hope there is enough salt. The Joy of Cooking recipe called for twice as much salt.

Roasting
Veering slightly from the "Joy of Cooking" instructions, I will be stuffing the turkey with a shallot, a carrot, and a celery stalk. The shallot is taking place of the onion due to the smaller turkey cavity. To encourage browning, the turkey skin will be covered with melted butter.

Per my March turkey blog, I will be roasting the turkey at 325 deg. F on the lowest rack setting. The turkey will be positioned on a wire rack on a disposable, aluminum roasting pan, with a cup of water at the bottom of the pan to discourage burning of drippings. Because this turkey is less than half the weight of March's turkey, it will be difficult to guess how much oven time I will require. To be conservative, I will cook the turkey for even less time than I proposed in my March blog:

The turkey will be breast side up for 1.25-1.5 hours, and then breast side down for 25 minutes, or until the center of the thigh is 170 deg. F (according to the "Joy", this will help ensure the tenderest of breast meat, but the thigh meat will be a bit pink, but still thoroughly cooked).

Resting
I will be resting the bird under a tent of aluminum foil for 15-20 minutes.

To be continued...