It’s been so busy that I had forgot to mention my Thanksgiving adventure. So here we go.

This is the first Thanksgiving that Tom and I would not be spending at home, just the two of us. His mother ended up not having to work on the holiday and wanted to have a family gathering. Since this is the first time it’s happened since Tom and I have been married, I didn’t make an issue or express my disappointment. Also, I had declared and coordinated the first church potluck for Thanksgiving so I knew I could get some cooking out of my system.

What I didn’t realize is how much cooking I would get out of my system.

We had been planning this for a month, and I had been talking to my pastor and her husband about this for weeks. Her husband, Dave, loves to cook. So do I. The last we spoke, they had a roaster, and were looking forward to bringing a turkey. Great, I said, I would bring everything else.

Fast forward to Friday morning before the Sunday potluck. I get the message on my cell phone:

“Hi Jen! Dave’s working this weekend, so he’s wondering if you can bring the turkey? Thanks!”

If you’ve never cooked a turkey before, let me explain that you can’t thaw a turkey in a day. I know I have to buy a fresh turkey, which doesn’t excite me because it’s more expensive. If I were cooking for my family or for Tom’s family, I would go all out with some fancy fresh turkey. It’s not. It’s my church friends and, as much as I like them, I don’t think they warrant the price of a fresh turkey. Although it’s too late, and now I have no choice.

Next, I turn to Ken and complain that I’ve been saddled with this turkey two days before the potluck. His response:

“Oh man, you’ve gotta brine it!”

I’ve never brined a turkey, but of course I value Ken’s culinary opinion. Immediately I consult the Grand Poobah of Food, Alton Brown.

From the “Romancing the Bird” episode of his show, Good Eats, I find the recipe for the Good Eats Roast Turkey.

Basically, you take the ingredients for the brine…

1 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 gallon vegetable stock
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1/2 tablespoon allspice berries
1/2 tablespoon candied ginger
(Note: Candied ginger can be expensive so I did not buy any and it turned out just fine.)

…and you put it into a bucket. Put your turkey in there and add ice water until the bird is covered.

Before Tom posts this in the comments section, I will go ahead and tell you that I didn’t have an appropriate bucket. I had considered a couple of different tubs, but they were so big that the turkey would not have been covered and the brine would have been really diluted. We go into the basement and start looking at our storage shelves. We see an empty bucket sitting on a bottom shelf amidst a stack of boxes.

Tom points it out and notes that it really is the best shape and size for a turkey brine in our whole house. He sees the contemplative look on my face and starts to laugh. Hard. I can tell he will not be eating the turkey.

I cleaned the bucket out. I did! In fact, I scrubbed it out twice. I mean, it never had USED cat litter in there. The cat litter was clean! Oh sure, it’s toxic and can kill you, but the Soft Scrub with Bleach I used to clean it out is probably worse!

So after I scrubbed it with harsh, people-killing chemicals, I washed it out again with hot water and dish soap, and brought it upstairs.

It’s good to note that no one in my church reads my blog - they don’t even know I have one. But I digress.

I bring the bucket upstairs and, after my brine had heated up in a pot, I poured it into the bucket. After cleaning the turkey, I set it into the bucket, breast-side down. Then I added my iced water. The lid sealed up the bucket nicely and I set it out in the garage overnight to keep cool.

In the morning, I got up, took the turkey out of the brine and thoroughly cleaned it - if you do not thoroughly clean your turkey, it will be salty. Rinse it. Then rinse it again. Then rinse it once more just to make sure! Pat dry. I put it into a disposable roasting pan that I had set on top of a cookie sheet - for structure.

After you roast the bird, uncovered, at 500 degrees (gives the turkey a nice golden color), cover it in a double layer of foil. Seriously. I think this is the key. Reduce heat to 350 and bake for another couple of hours. I had to leave for church early because I had to do worship, so I reduced it to 300 degrees and let it cook. Never basted it. Never touched it. I left for church at 9:45am and got home at about 12:00 — the turkey was done. When we took it out of the oven, the roasting pan was filled with juice from the turkey, which has never happened to me before. Originally we intended to have someone carve it, but it was so tender that even the white meat could be carved with a spoon. The meat was fallling off of the bone, it was so tender. The flavor was equally amazing. I will never go back to the “old” way of cooking a turkey. Not only was it delicious, but I barely did any work on it. After it sits in the brine, you just stick it in the oven and let it sit there until it decides to be done!

Tom still pines away for a deep-fried turkey, which he once had at his brother’s house, but I don’t care for (A.) all that grease and (B.) lighting my house on fire. So for me and my house, we will brine the turkey.

The next time you make your turkey, consider brining it. You won’t be sorry.