It’s Thanksgiving time again, and you want the juiciest, most flavorful turkey possible So you’re wondering – is brining a turkey worth the extra effort? The answer is a resounding yes!
Brining, which involves soaking the turkey in a saltwater solution, yields big rewards that are well worth the small amount of extra time. Here’s why you should make brining your turkey a new Thanksgiving tradition.
The Benefits of Brining a Turkey
Brining a turkey delivers major improvements in both flavor and moisture
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More flavorful meat: The salt in the brine seasons the turkey thoroughly, all the way to the bone. You’ll taste the difference in every bite.
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Incredibly juicy meat: Brining helps the turkey retain moisture, preventing the dreaded dry Thanksgiving bird. It makes the breast meat just as juicy as the legs and thighs.
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Better texture: Brined turkey meat is tender and succulent, never stringy or chewy.
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Foolproof roasting: The extra moisture protects you from overcooking. The bird has a buffer if you accidentally roast it too long.
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Brining allows room for error: Even novice cooks can pull off a perfect brined turkey. It’s insurance against kitchen mistakes.
Simply put, brining leads to the best possible roasted turkey – juicy, tender, infused with flavor. Once you try it, you’ll never go back to an unbrined bird!
How Brining Works
Brining improves turkey through the magic of osmosis. When you soak the turkey in a saltwater brine, the salt dissolves into the solution. This causes water molecules to be drawn into the turkey’s cells through osmosis. The absorbed water plumps up the cells and makes the meat juicier.
Brining also breaks down some muscle proteins, allowing the turkey breast to better retain moisture. The result is 30-40% less moisture loss during roasting.
Finally, the dissolved salt in the brine seasons the turkey meat from the inside out. The salt infuses deep into the muscle for exceptionally flavorsome turkey.
Easy Brining Methods
“But brining seems like so much work,” you say. Not so! There are two easy brining methods:
Salt water brine: Dissolve 1/2 to 1 cup salt per gallon of water. Submerge the rinsed turkey and refrigerate 8-24 hours.
Dry brine: Pat the turkey dry and rub it all over with 1 tablespoon salt per pound. Refrigerate uncovered 8-24 hours and let the salt work its way into the meat.
It’s that simple. Both techniques produce a moist, seasoned bird but wet brining leads to slightly juicier meat. Choose whichever method fits your schedule.
Make ahead
Brining does require planning in advance – you need to soak the turkey 1-2 days before roasting. But a little pre-planning means your turkey is guaranteed to impress.
You can brine the turkey right in the fridge in a large container or cooler. Place it on a tray or in a bag to minimize mess. Refrigerate and enjoy your freed up oven!
Worth the Effort
An hour of easy brining prep leads to the most succulent and flavorful roasted turkey of your life. No more dry, disappointing birds!
The modest amount of extra effort is so worthwhile. This Thanksgiving, wow your family with a juicy, tender, well-seasoned brined turkey.
Once you enjoy brined turkey, you’ll never cook an unbrined bird again. Happy Thanksgiving!
The Problems With Brining
There are two major problems with brining. First off, its a major pain in the butt. A cooler, a big bucket, or a couple of layers of heavy-duty garbage bags tied together with hopes that they won’t break are all common options for a vessel big enough to submerge a whole turkey. During the whole process, you must keep the turkey and the brine cold inside the vessel. For an extra-large bird, this could take a couple of days. This means that you either can’t use the main part of your fridge at the time of year when you want to, or you have to keep ice packs or rotating ice on hand to keep the bird cool.
“brining robs your bird of flavor”
Second, brining robs your bird of flavor. Think about it: Your turkey is absorbing water, and holding on to it. That means that the extra 20%20savings%20in%20moisture%20loss%20doesn’t really come from turkey juice; it’s just tap water. Many folks who eat brined birds have that very complaint: Its juicy, but the juice is watery.
There have been a lot of suggestions for how to solve this problem, so I chose to put them all to the test side by side.
Brining Alternatives
By far the most common alternative is plain old salting. This time, osmosis really does work when you salt a turkey (or chicken) breast. The meat juices are first drawn out through osmosis. The salt dissolves in these juices to make a very concentrated brine. This brine can then break down muscle proteins. Because the muscle fibers are now loose, the juices can be reabsorbed, and this time they bring salt with them.
Through this process—osmosis, dissolving, reabsorbing—the salt will slowly work its way into the meat.
Some people have also asked the very simple question: why not brine in something more flavorful if the tap water is bland and boring??
Why not, indeed? I decided to find out.
Because there were so many ways to compare them, it wasn’t possible to try to roast turkey breasts at the same time. I roasted 24 chicken breasts instead, but in four groups of six. I then averaged the data from each group. There is a difference between chicken and turkey, but the two are similar enough that results for one should be similar to results for the other.
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Heres what I tried:
- Breast #1: plain (untreated)
- Breast #2: brined overnight in a 6% salt solution
- Breast #3: heavily salted overnight
- Breast #4: brined overnight in chicken broth with a 6% salt content.
- Breast #5: brined overnight in cider with a 6% salt content.
- Breast #6: soaked overnight in plain water
Breasts #1 and #6 were included as a control to ensure that the brine and salt solutions were behaving as expected, as well as a means of evaluating how closely the data would mirror that of the turkey breasts.
Heres what happened with breasts #1, #2, #3, and #6 (plain, brined, salted, and water-soaked).
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The chicken breasts that had been brined kept a lot more of their moisture than either the plain chicken breasts or the chicken breasts that had been soaked in water. Indeed, in this test, the water-soaked breasts actually ended up drier on average than the plain breasts. Take a look at the carnage:
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Dry as the Gobi Desert (on an admittedly very-moist-for-a-desert day).
On the other hand, take a look at the brined breast:
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As plump and juicy as a benevolent aunt in a Disney film. Tasting it, you definitely feel a case of wet-sponge syndrome. It looks like it’s juicy because water comes out of it when you chew it, but the texture is too loose and the taste is too bland.
Our next test was on the salted breast. It was still much more moist than the unsalted breast, but a few percentage points drier than the brined breast. Tasting it, youll find its undoubtedly juicier and better-seasoned, with a stronger chicken flavor. It has a smooth, dense, but tender texture like lightly cured meat, which is very different from both plain turkey and brined turkey.
Visually, you can see clear signs of this curing with its decidedly pink hue:
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With a small chicken breast, this pink, moist, cured section extends nearly to the center of the breast. The only place you’d see it on a turkey is around the edges, which are also the parts that tend to dry out and overcook the most.
Even though the brined breast tasted and felt a little more juicy, I’d choose the salted chicken over the brined any day.
Is brining a turkey worth it?
FAQ
Is it absolutely necessary to brine turkey?
Does brining really make a difference?
Do I rinse turkey after brining?
Does brining a turkey change the flavor?
Can You brine a Turkey?
After roasting countless turkeys over the past few decades, I can confidently say that giving your bird a dunk in a luxurious saltwater brine (also known as a wet brine) results in extra tender, impossibly juicy meat. Learn how to brine turkey with this simple step-by-step recipe, and you’ll never want to prep it any other way. What Is Brining?
Is brining a Turkey worth it?
The latter, most of all, is the source of some polemic: after all, while many extol the benefits of brining a turkey, it can seem like a lot of work. At the end of the day, many wonder if it’s really worth the time, effort, and fridge space brining requires. The idea behind the process of brining a turkey is relatively simple.
Can You brine a thawed Turkey?
Be sure to thaw your turkey beforehand, as it’s not safe to brine a fully frozen turkey. You can brine a partially thawed turkey, though, since the thawing process will continue while the turkey is in the brine. Wet brine the turkey in the refrigerator for 12 to 24 hours. Don’t go longer than that or the meat will get a spongy texture.
Why do turkeys need to be brined?
Brining, whether you’re using a traditional water-based brine or a dry brine, improves a turkey’s ability to retain moisture. Certain muscle proteins are naturally dissolved by the salt in the brine solution. Once these proteins are dissolved, muscle fibers lose some of their ability to contract when cooking.
How much salt do you need to brine a Turkey?
So long as your brine solution is around 6% salt by weight (that’s about one and a quarter cups of kosher salt per gallon) and your turkey is submerged, you’ll do just fine. Here are some approximate measures for the minimum amount of water and salt you’ll need for a range of turkey sizes: Should I Brine a Kosher, Enhanced, or Self-Basting Turkey?
Which brine is best for roasting a Turkey?
When it comes to roasting the tastiest turkey, Import says he chooses a wet brine. “A wet brine is more scientific, consistent, effective, and produces better texture.