SirPorkaLot
somebody shut me the fark up.
This is for those folks that were wondering...
“I only have a day and a half, can I dry brine a frozen turkey?”
Even if you weren’t wondering, maybe now you are.
I picked up an all natural non-enhanced turkey (up to 6% retained water is ok), but it is frozen solid (a couple of more weeks before the fresh turkeys show up here)
So I decided to do a dry brine tutorial using a frozen bird, because sometimes, life just gets in the way.
A frozen turkey has a protective outside layer of ice glazed on it. This glaze needs to come off so the dry brine can do its magic.
I simply run the turkey under hot water until all the exterior glaze is melted off, and then I dried the exterior with paper towels.
It is now ready for the application of Harvest Brine
Harvest Brine is a product that contains sea salt, apples, maple, sage and black pepper. The sea salt not only works to Brine the turkey, but it does a great job of helping to defrost the turkey (that’s why they put salt down in the winter, to help melt the ice)
The proper application rate is 1 teaspoon per pound, but you can use 1.5 times that amount and still be okay.
This is a 11.92 lb turkey., so that would be 12 teaspoons.
My handy dandy conversion app tells me that 12 teaspoons = 4 tablespoons
This is what 4 tablespoons of Harvest Brine looks like
It is important to try to make sure you actually get 4 tablespoons of brine on the turkey. I normally lose about a tablespoon when applying to the bird, so I make sure to add that amount back in.
This is what is looks like with 4 tablespoons of brine applied to the turkey
Once Brine is on, the next step is to wrap tightly with plastic wrap.
Please don’t use garbage bags, zip lock bags, brine bags, etc. also don’t use pans with a cover.
The wrap needs to cling tightly to the turkey and these other methods don’t wrap the bird tight enough.
In case you are wondering why I recommend wrapping tightly (some internet resources actually recommend leaving unwrapped while dry brining, please do NOT do this)...
The salt pulls the moisture from the turkey, the moisture then mixes with the salt and dissolves it. You now have a briny mixture sitting on the surface of the turkey. The plastic wrap helps to keep this moisture against the skin of the turkey, where it gets pulled back into the meat through a process called diffusion. If the meat is not wrapped tightly, the moisture on the exterior rolls off the meat and there is less moisture (Brine) to get pulled back into the meat, potentially leaving you worse off than if you didn’t Brine at all.
Wrapped and ready for the fridge.
I put the wrapped turkey on a shallow pan to catch any liquid that may seep off and into the fridge for a 30 hour nap (works out to ~2.5 hours per pound)
I put this in at 7:30am this morning, it will come out at 11:30am tomorrow, get unwrapped and air dry for a couple of hours before it hits the smoke around 1:30 tomorrow.
I will update this thread as I go.
“I only have a day and a half, can I dry brine a frozen turkey?”
Even if you weren’t wondering, maybe now you are.
I picked up an all natural non-enhanced turkey (up to 6% retained water is ok), but it is frozen solid (a couple of more weeks before the fresh turkeys show up here)
So I decided to do a dry brine tutorial using a frozen bird, because sometimes, life just gets in the way.
A frozen turkey has a protective outside layer of ice glazed on it. This glaze needs to come off so the dry brine can do its magic.
I simply run the turkey under hot water until all the exterior glaze is melted off, and then I dried the exterior with paper towels.
It is now ready for the application of Harvest Brine
Harvest Brine is a product that contains sea salt, apples, maple, sage and black pepper. The sea salt not only works to Brine the turkey, but it does a great job of helping to defrost the turkey (that’s why they put salt down in the winter, to help melt the ice)
The proper application rate is 1 teaspoon per pound, but you can use 1.5 times that amount and still be okay.
This is a 11.92 lb turkey., so that would be 12 teaspoons.
My handy dandy conversion app tells me that 12 teaspoons = 4 tablespoons
This is what 4 tablespoons of Harvest Brine looks like
It is important to try to make sure you actually get 4 tablespoons of brine on the turkey. I normally lose about a tablespoon when applying to the bird, so I make sure to add that amount back in.
This is what is looks like with 4 tablespoons of brine applied to the turkey
Once Brine is on, the next step is to wrap tightly with plastic wrap.
Please don’t use garbage bags, zip lock bags, brine bags, etc. also don’t use pans with a cover.
The wrap needs to cling tightly to the turkey and these other methods don’t wrap the bird tight enough.
In case you are wondering why I recommend wrapping tightly (some internet resources actually recommend leaving unwrapped while dry brining, please do NOT do this)...
The salt pulls the moisture from the turkey, the moisture then mixes with the salt and dissolves it. You now have a briny mixture sitting on the surface of the turkey. The plastic wrap helps to keep this moisture against the skin of the turkey, where it gets pulled back into the meat through a process called diffusion. If the meat is not wrapped tightly, the moisture on the exterior rolls off the meat and there is less moisture (Brine) to get pulled back into the meat, potentially leaving you worse off than if you didn’t Brine at all.
Wrapped and ready for the fridge.
I put the wrapped turkey on a shallow pan to catch any liquid that may seep off and into the fridge for a 30 hour nap (works out to ~2.5 hours per pound)
I put this in at 7:30am this morning, it will come out at 11:30am tomorrow, get unwrapped and air dry for a couple of hours before it hits the smoke around 1:30 tomorrow.
I will update this thread as I go.
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