Cooking a whole turkey, especially a large one, takes 2½ to 5 hours. The lean parts of the bird, such as the breasts, often cook within the first hour and end up overcooked before the rest of the bird is ready. Fortunately, there’s a simple way to solve this problem, and that’s brining your turkey before cooking. Brining locks water and salt inside a turkey so that the meat stays moist and tender after it leaves the oven. It also infuses the turkey with loads of flavor, leaving you with juicy, tasty meat.
Please be aware that many of our turkey products come brined or ‘basted’. Check the label to see if your turkey has been brined. If so, we don’t recommend further brining as it may cause your turkey to taste overly salty.
You can wet or dry brine your bird, but before discussing how to brine turkey, let’s look at more reasons why everyone should brine before cooking.
Brining is a popular technique used by many cooks to help ensure a moist, flavorful turkey on Thanksgiving or other holidays. But if your turkey is already pre basted, is brining still recommended or even safe? In this article, we’ll examine what pre basting is, whether brining a pre basted turkey is advisable, and tips for doing so successfully.
What Is a Pre Basted Turkey?
Pre basted turkeys have been injected with a solution, usually containing:
- Broth – Provides moisture
- Fats – Keeps turkey juicy
- Sugars – Enhances browning
- Seasonings – Adds flavor
The solution is pumped throughout the turkey to permeate the meat. Typically 8-15% of the turkey’s weight comes from the injected solution.
Pre basting helps ensure a tender, juicy turkey with added flavor. Since the solution gets deep into the meat, seasonings are distributed thoroughly.
How Pre Basting Differs from Brining
With brining, the whole turkey is submerged in a saltwater solution. The salt allows the turkey to retain more moisture while also seasoning the meat.
Key differences of brining include
- More even moisture distribution
- Ability to infuse flavors throughout
- Salting/curing effect from the brine
The salt causes protein changes allowing brined meat to hold onto more moisture during cooking. This makes brined turkey famously juicy.
Can You Brine a Pre Basted Turkey?
You can brine a pre basted turkey, but it’s not essential. Here are some considerations:
-
Avoid over-salting – Since pre basted turkeys already contain seasoning, brining could make the meat too salty. Reduce brining time or use a lower salt brine.
-
Enhance flavor – While pre basting provides basic seasoning, brining allows you to infuse more complex flavors.
-
Improve moisture – Brining may distribute moisture more evenly than injecting alone
-
Watch out for gravy – With both pre basting and brining, gravy can get overly salty from the seasonings.
So brining a pre basted turkey can provide benefits, but requires adjustments to prevent over-salting the meat.
Tips for Brining a Pre Basted Turkey
If you do opt to brine a pre basted turkey, keep these tips in mind:
-
Use less salt – Cut the salt in your brine recipe by half since salt is already present.
-
Shorten time – Brine for 6-12 hours rather than 24 to prevent over-salting.
-
Rinse well – Rinse the turkey after brining to remove excess surface salt.
-
Enhance flavor – Try a salt-free brine with sugars, spices and vinegars/juices.
-
Watch the gravy – Go easy on extra salt when making gravy.
Following these suggestions will allow you to gain the benefits of brining without making the meat overly salty.
Should You Brine a Self-Basting Turkey?
Self-basting turkeys are another category of pre-treated birds. They have been injected with even more solution, up to 15% by weight.
Most experts recommend not brining a self-basting turkey. With such a high percentage of solution already added, brining will almost certainly make it too salty. The injections should be enough to keep a self-basting turkey moist and flavorful.
If you do want to brine a self-basting turkey, use a no-salt brine and minimal brining time to avoid over-salting. But it’s safest to avoid brining these birds altogether.
Brining Times for Whole Turkeys
For fresh turkeys that haven’t been pre-treated, follow these general guidelines for brining times:
- 8-12 lbs – brine for 8-10 hours
- 12-16 lbs – brine for 12-16 hours
- 16-20 lbs – brine for 18-24 hours
Bigger birds need more time for the brine to fully penetrate the meat. Overnight brining tends to work best for large turkeys.
Should You Still Baste a Brined Turkey?
Basting means spooning pan juices over the turkey as it roasts. This helps promote browning and crispy skin.
Even with a brined turkey, basting can be beneficial. Brining improves moisture and flavor inside the meat. Basting then enhances the exterior.
So basting and brining serve different purposes. Doing both helps ensure ideal texture and appearance.
Pre basted and self-basted turkeys contain injected solutions designed to keep them moist and tasty. For these birds, brining is unnecessary and risks over-salting.
However, brining can provide advantages like more even moisture and ability to infuse flavors. With a pre basted turkey, you can brine using less salt and time to gain benefits without drawbacks.
For fresh turkeys, brining remains highly recommended. Follow brining times based on size. Basting further improves a brined turkey’s skin. With the right techniques, you can enjoy a holiday turkey with incredible juiciness, flavor and beauty.
Why Brine Your Turkey?
Below are some of the top reasons why you should never skip brining before cooking your turkey:
Brined turkey takes less time to cook. The salt in the brine breaks down a lot of the protein, causing the dark meat to become tender in less time.
Brining forces turkey to absorb extra moisture. A lot of that moisture stays inside the turkey during cooking, leaving you with juicy white and dark meat when the cooking is over.
Applying topical seasoning to a whole turkey only goes skin deep, leaving you with a tasty surface and bland interior. Brining allows salt and other brine seasonings to seep deep into your meat, giving you a tastier bird.
If cooking a whole turkey, the white meat can overcook before the dark meat can reach an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Brining helps prevent this by keeping the white meat moist until the dark meat cooks completely.
Wet Brining vs. Dry Brining
The correct answer to how to brine turkey depends on the type of results you want. For the juiciest and moistest turkey, wet brining is your best option. Wet brining involves soaking your turkey in a bath of saltwater and refrigerating it for 24 to 48 hours.
Wet brining will increase the turkey’s moisture. That extra moisture helps ensure that the meat doesn’t go dry during cooking. The salt in the brine will also flavor and tenderize the meat so that it takes less time to cook.
For the tastiest turkey with crispy skin, go with dry brining. Dry brining, also called salting, involves coating all parts of your turkey with salt & seasonings and letting it rest in the fridge for 12 to 24 hours.
The salt will extract the turkey’s existing moisture and flavor it. The turkey will then reabsorb this moisture, which will break down muscle proteins and prevent them from releasing moisture during cooking. The end result is a moist, tender, and highly flavorful turkey.
Below are some other differences to consider before choosing wet or dry brining:
- Space: Wet brining takes up a lot of fridge space for one to two days, making it unideal if your fridge isn’t large enough to hold a tub of brine and turkey.
- Time: Compared to wet brining, dry brining takes less time to deliver impressive results. However, a dry brined turkey will not be as moist as a wet brined turkey.
- Cooking Mess: Wet brined turkey releases a lot of moisture during cooking, which can leave a mess in your grill or oven.
Please be reminded that you should not brine pre-salted, enhanced, or self-basting turkeys. Since such turkeys already contain seasonings, brining could lead to too salty meat.
How to Brine a Turkey
FAQ
Should I brine an already basted turkey?
There’s no need to remove the salt added from a pre-basted turkey. You can still brine it and it won’t get saltier. The salt in the turkey and brine will level out due to the osmotic action. The salt and moisture will only travel from the higher concentration to the lower concentration, not visa versa.
Can you still brine a turkey already injected with solution?
My recommendation is that you do NOT brine a turkey that has already been injected with a salt solution, as that is essentially the purpose of brining a turkey in the first place. You also run the risk of having an overly salted turkey.
Can I inject a pre-basted turkey?
You can inject just right before cooking it. But, if you pull the turkey out of the package now and prepare it, you will have a couple of days refrigerator time to season it and help dry the skin some. If you were brining you would inject after the brine period.
When not to brine a turkey?
Brining a turkey is totally optional. If you’re short on time or just want the most straight-forward method to roast a turkey, skip the brining step and just use the Simple Roasted Turkey method. Some people swear that brining yields the most tender, juicy meat, but it takes planning ahead.
Can You brine a pre basted Turkey?
If you brine it too then you wont really hurt anything as the turkey can only take on so much salt, but at this point you are pretty much wasting time, money and resources to brine a pre basted or self basting turkey. If you do accidentally brine a turkey that was purchase already brined without noticing it, it will be just fine.
How do you brine a Turkey?
When brining a turkey you are trying to get a certain amount of moisture trapped within the turkey by the salt. This is done by soaking or giving the turkey a bath in a solution which the salt is trapping the moisture in the turkey. Quite a few people prefer this method because the turkey is submerged which allows it to work better.
Should a Turkey be brined?
The short answer is yes, but there really isn’t a point in doing this. Turkey’s can only hold so much salt. So if the turkey is already pre basted then it most likely doesn’t need to be brined.
Should you brine a Turkey over night?
Many also prefer brining a turkey over night with less salt while other use more salt but only brine it for four hours. When brining overnight, it is recommended to use about a cup of table salt per two gallons of water.
Is it better to brine a Turkey wet or dry?
Both wet and dry brining use salt as the main ingredient. In wet brining, the salt is dissolved in liquid, while in dry brining, it’s rubbed directly on the turkey. Do not brine kosher turkeys or self-basting turkeys. The brand of salt and size of crystals also matter. However, this passage does not provide information on which method results in better flavor.
What does pre brined Turkey mean?
Most turkeys that you buy in the supermarket have been treated with some type of brine solution to preserve freshness. What Does “Pre Brined” Mean? When a turkey is pre-brined, that means it’s been treated with a solution of water and salt before being packaged for sale.