Thanksgiving Treats

[cobblerdave]

Re: Thanksgiving Treats

Glad to see all the responses to this thread, lots of good ideas and suggestions. After reading all the good article and ideas. I decided on the wet brine, although dry makes more since now. I'm not sure if wet will be worth it but I don't like change, so decided to continue with the original plan. I'll let you know how it turns out...... I got my turkey in the wet brine solution this morning. My brine solution is just a throw together of what sounded good at the time and what was on hand.... Sugar, spice and every thing nice salt but no snails or puppy dog tales.

The oven was hovering around 250F this morning after pizza party last Friday. Looks like I'll have to put a small fire in it tomorrow so I can hit the target starting temp of about 275F for the lighting of the charcoal snake and reaching cooking temp of about 300F+ .......Bird in at about 7:00am on turkey day dinner at 1:00pm.............wish my luck

I also will be warming the ham and any other dishes the wife throws at me. I'm sure my daughters awesome broccoli casserole will be one of them.
What else is everyone else planning? Lets keep posting I'm getting hungry.

Gudday
Good luck to all with the dreaded turkey, I hope they all come out well.
I think your right to stick to the tried and proven, Kbartman. Its a lesson Ive learnt [ and relearnt] is not to experiment on your guests......
Regards Dave

[kkgator]

Re: Thanksgiving Treats

I immersed my bird in the brine yesterday AM. Thankfully I work in a restaurant and have access to a large walk-in cooler as well as being able to reuse a plastic hard boiled egg container instead of buying a 5 gallon bucket from HD or using a cooler. I will be documenting my bake tomorrow and hope to have video & pics by Black Friday. Happy Thanksgiving to All and buona festa!

Bec, Love the Serious Eat website especially "slice" & "the food lab"

[kbartman]

Re: Thanksgiving Treats

Glad to see all the responses to this thread, lots of good ideas and suggestions. After reading all the good article and ideas. I decided on the wet brine, although dry makes more since now. I'm not sure if wet will be worth it but I don't like change, so decided to continue with the original plan. I'll let you know how it turns out...... I got my turkey in the wet brine solution this morning. My brine solution is just a throw together of what sounded good at the time and what was on hand.... Sugar, spice and every thing nice salt but no snails or puppy dog tales.

The oven was hovering around 250F this morning after pizza party last Friday. Looks like I'll have to put a small fire in it tomorrow so I can hit the target starting temp of about 275F for the lighting of the charcoal snake and reaching cooking temp of about 300F+ .......Bird in at about 7:00am on turkey day dinner at 1:00pm.............wish my luck

I also will be warming the ham and any other dishes the wife throws at me. I'm sure my daughters awesome broccoli casserole will be one of them.
What else is everyone else planning? Lets keep posting I'm getting hungry.

[Bec1208]

Re: Thanksgiving Treats

Gulf, I came across a discussion of brining that strongly supports dry brining. Very interesting read with some empirical testing of the various methods.

The Food Lab: The Truth About Brining Turkey | Serious Eats

Bruce

[SableSprings]

Re: Thanksgiving Treats

Last time we did turkey in the oven we used a dry brine technique and I have to say it was far easier than the wet brine we'd done previously...and I couldn't tell the difference. Here's my notes from the bake: Dry brine on the 14.5# turkey (3-4 TBS kosher salt rubbed on turkey, refrigerate for 2 1/2 days in a large plastic bag turning the bird every 12 hours or so). Pushed butter & sage under the skin after the dry brine period. Dried turkey skin (initially with paper towels) and then air dry for several hours in fridge. Remove bird from refrigerator and let it warm up for an hour. Oven was at about 450? when we put the turkey in. Watched & rotated pan every half hour or so for the entire bake (flipped the turkey in the pan once - first 30 minutes turkey was breast side down then we flipped it over). Took about 2 hours and 45 minutes in roaster to get to 156F internal, added a foil cover the last 30 minutes to keep it from browning too much. (Removed foil to take picture then recovered.) Removed from oven to rest and it coasted to the 165 final temp in about 10 minutes. Total covered rest was about 45 minutes until rest of meal was ready. Carve & consume = excellent!

This year the plan is for both a dry brine turkey and a pork crown roast (I haven't seen the recipe my wife's planning to use for the roast but I know it will be delightful.)

[Bec1208]

Re: Thanksgiving Treats

This was a 59 cent per pound turkey that was already injected with brine. I followed the advice to simply inject with melted butter.

[Gulf]

Re: Thanksgiving Treats

I generally followed the guidelines described at the site below.

Barbecue Turkey And Turkey On The Grill: The Ultimate Smoked Turkey Recipe

I rubbed a herb and oil mix above and below the skin and rotated the pan every 15 minutes for the first hour. I removed turkey when the breast temp was 160f. Results were very moist and tasty.

Bec1208,
The bird looks great! That is a very interseting article. I wasn't sure by your post, and was was wondering if you followed the articles advice to dry brine?

[Bec1208]

Re: Thanksgiving Treats

We are invited to friends for Thanksgiving and we decided to cook our turkey today. I had fired the oven for pizza two days ago. The temp today (about 300f) which was a bit lower then the 325 to 350 I wanted for the turkey. So I built a small fire to raise the temp. I pushed the coals to the back and started the turkey cooking. I generally followed the guidelines described at the site below.

Barbecue Turkey And Turkey On The Grill: The Ultimate Smoked Turkey Recipe

I rubbed a herb and oil mix above and below the skin and rotated the pan every 15 minutes for the first hour. I removed turkey when the breast temp was 160f. Results were very moist and tasty.

[K79]

Re: Thanksgiving Treats

Ok so I don't know how I came across this, but it's from this site. I'm going to be following this plan of attack. I posted a few questions that remain unclear to me in the get cooking section of the forums as well.

Forno Bravo Community Cookbook
Wood-Oven Roasted Thanksgiving Turkey
Posted on November 28, 2011 by admin
what follows is my treatise on roasting a holiday turkey in a wood-fired oven. this was my first try at roasting a bird in the oven, but the results were pretty delicious, if i do say so. my thanksgiving guests are willing to back me up, so i’ll take that as enough proof that this is a method worth sharing. as with any wood-oven cooking, results may vary. i’m working with a primavera 60 model oven, and this particular turkey was approximately 12.5 pounds. by my guess, the primavera 60 could probably fit up to a 15- or 16-pound turkey, but not much past that. on to the cooking!
for the brine:
1/2 gallon water
1 c kosher salt
1 c dark brown sugar
2 oranges
2 lemons
1 tbs whole black peppercorns
1/2 bunch fresh parsley
2 sprigs fresh sage
6 sprigs fresh thyme
1/2 yellow onion, sliced
1/2 head garlic, cut in half
4 lbs ice
for the turkey:
4 tbs butter, softened
1 orange
1 lemon
2 sprigs fresh sage
4 sprigs fresh thyme
3 ft (or so) butcher’s twine
4 carrots
4 ribs celery
2 yellow onions
2-3 sheets aluminum foil
the day before you want to cook, combine all the brine ingredients except the ice and bring to a boil. for the oranges and lemons, use a vegetable peeler to remove the zest and add that, along with the juice from each fruit, to the brine. discard the rest of the fruit. once the brine has come up, remove from the heat to a container big enough to hold your turkey. add the ice to cool the brine.
(this is a good tip when doing any sort of brining – instead of waiting around for your brine to cool, always halve the amount of water the brine calls for and make up the rest in ice. a pint of water weighs exactly 1 pound, so it’s always easy to convert volume to weight. so, for example, with this brine we need one gallon of water total. we use half a gallon to steep the aromatics and dissolve the salt and sugar, and then cool it down with 4 pounds of ice: 4 pounds of ice equals 4 pints of water, and 4 pints equals 2 quarts, or half a gallon, of water. done and done.)
place your turkey in the brine breast-side down and store, refrigerated, overnight. (another aside: if you don’t have a big enough refrigerator to hold your bird in the brine, do your brining in a cooler. if you’re working in a cold-weather area, just stow away the cooler outside or in an unheated garage. otherwise throw some ice packs in the brine with the turkey, seal up the cooler, and you should be good to go.)
the next morning, remove the turkey from the brine and allow it to sit on your counter, uncovered, for at least an hour. this will allow the bird to dry off somewhat, as well as temper, which will make for much more even cooking. meanwhile, get your oven burning. you want a nice hot, but not blazing, oven to roast in. i fired my oven and held it at around 450F for an hour before i put the bird in.
to prepare the turkey for roasting, first rub with the butter. apply some to the outside of the bird, and then, using your finger, gently separate the skin from the breast meat to form a pocket. work the rest of the butter under the skin so that it covers the breast meat. slice up the orange and the lemon and insert them into the cavity along with the sage and thyme. next use the twine to truss the bird. i won’t go into yet another long aside on trussing, but i will say that a trussed bird will cook more evenly and will look nicer on the platter as a finished product. go online and you should be able to find a number of illustrated guides to trussing a bird in about 2 seconds. next, roughly chop the carrots, celery and onions and place in the bottom of your roasting pan. if you have a roasting rack , place this on top of the mirepoix and put your turkey on the rack. otherwise, the turkey can sit directly on top of the mirepoix with no ill effects.
now, at long last, we’re ready to cook. i put my turkey in the oven with my door thermometer reading about 450F. i also made sure to keep a small stick or two of wood smoldering in the back of the oven at all times to impart a nice smokey flavor to the meat. my finished bird had an assertive, but by no means overpowering, smokiness that everyone loved. after about 10 minutes, i rotated my bird 180 degrees. after 20 minutes, i already had nice color on the skin, so i tented the bird with the foil. this will allow your turkey to continue cooking while minimizing additional browning. if your bird hasn’t taken on sufficient color after 20 minutes, allow it to continue cooking uncovered until it gets where you want it. after you’ve tented your bird, allow it to continue roasting, rotating every half hour or so, until a thermometer inserted between the thigh and breast reads 160F. for my 12.5 pounder, my total cooking time was about 2.5 hours. by the end of cooking, my oven door thermo reading was hovering somewhere around 300F. remove your turkey from the oven and allow it to rest for at least 20 minutes before carving.
based on informal polling, this was probably the best thanksgiving turkey my family ever had, so give it a shot and you won’t be disappointed. oh, and don’t forget to make some delicious smokey gravy from the drippings in the bottom of the pan. good luck and good cooking.

[Millsies]

Re: Thanksgiving Treats

We did a turkey last year in our oven which we got last October. We started the fire a little late and had to get the turkey in while it was "pizza hot" to keep on schedule.
Well my hubby stood there for a good hour with the roasting pan in the mouth of the oven rotating it continuously until the skin was golden brown. We put the cover on, kept it half in, half out and would rotate every 15 min or so. It was a 25# brined, stuffed bird. It was done to correct temp. in under 2.5 hours and was by far the best bird we have ever eaten. My technique with the stuffing is to get it really hot in the microwave and stuff immediately before roasting. Screwing up on timing turned out in our favor!

[kkgator]

Re: Thanksgiving Treats

Yeah, I'm w/Gulf! Ham & Turkey for Thanksgiving, Seafood for Christmas Eve, Standing Rib Roast for Xmas Day, Leg of Lamb for Easter & don't forget the red beans & rice for New Years'!

Anyway, I digress. Here is my brine recipe that I adapted from Alton Brown. I believe his had candied ginger (way too fancy smancy for me)

1 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 gallon vegetable stock
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1 1/2 teaspoons allspice berries
1 gallon heavily iced water

I also love Coriander with my poultry so I throw 1TBSP Coriander Seeds in as well. Luckily I work in a restaurant and have access to a walk-in cooler which is where I set my science experiment inside my Home Depot 5 gallon bucket.

[Gulf]

Re: Thanksgiving Treats

Maybe,....... not,.................... "up there"

[hodgey1]

Re: Thanksgiving Treats

Looking forward to those brine recipes.

This recipe came to me from a friend from the West Virginia hills who has been using it for years. I can not say enough about how good it turns out. The recipe is simple yet the results are really amazing, juicy and flavorful.

One 15-20 lb turkey
One cup brown sugar
One cup Kosher salt
One Large onion diced
Additional Kosher Salt

Put the turkey in a large enough vessel to submerge, fill with cold water until turkey is sufficiently covered and remove turkey. Add all the listed ingredients and mix throughly. Put a whole "un-cracked" egg into the mixture, start adding additional Kosher salt while mixing and continue adding until egg floats. Remove egg and submerge turkey and keep refrigerated in brine for 48 hours. Remove, rinse and cook at 300* until thermometer read 170* in thigh. The last bird I did was 21lbs and was done in 5hrs unstuffed. The results are to die for!

Note/warning! I would not recommend this method with a stuffed bird. Poultry is nothing to mess with at lower cooking temps, if you love the flavor of stuffing inside a bird, cook off all of the giblets/neck and take some of the stock and add it to your stuffing. Also, if you want to slow smoke using this method, add the appropriate amount of curing salt/Prague powder to the brine and smoke at 250* until done. My years of experience and opinion is, don't waste your time curing and smoking a turkey unless you love ham because that what you end up with, and no one wants ham at Thanksgiving.

[Les]

Re: Thanksgiving Treats

A 16 lb stuffed bird will take 5 1/2 to 6 hours at 325 in a conventional oven. Our WFO's are similar to a convection oven so they say to drop the temp 25 deg. and start checking about 3/4 of the target cooking time. As we know, all of our ovens perform a little differently. In regard to brines, just google it. There are thousands of them, just pick what appeals to you. My wife likes the citrus flavored brines. We even stuff the bird w/ orange slices.

I wish I could give you a definitive answer regarding time/temp/weight but this is my 3rd year and it's still a work in progress.

[kbartman]

Re: Thanksgiving Treats

I'll pass on the brining recipes, unless you want to check this one out on another forum that I'm following.

I'm sure that you will get some varying and all very great responses to that question .

Looking forward to those brine recipes.

I think I decided on the method my bird will see on turkey day , although I will try to start the snake with a satuated of temp of about 250F, and stabilize about 300F. I'm cooking a 16.5lb bird, maybe stuffed it. Wonder how long should I cook it? Dinners is at 1:00 pm, birds needs to rest, when should I start?....................... How will you all cook your bird this turkey day?