[Modernist Cuisine] Basic Brine (3•168)

[Anonymous Modernist 2976]

I'm planning to brine and smoke a turkey for Thanksgiving, but am not sure which is the best way to brine it. Would it be better to inject the breast with a salt brine, as suggested for chicken in MC, or immerse the whole bird in a brine? Also, what is the highest temperature to smoke it at without compromising the smoking process to minimize the time in the danger temperature zone?

[Anonymous Modernist 2103]

I don't know much about smoking, but I am going to do the basic brine(3-168) as suggested on 3-172 for a whole turkey. It says inject with 14% brine and immerse the turkey in the remaining brine. I'm doing a test right now, however I just used a Jaccard Tenderizer instead of actually injecting the brine. For determining when the brine is done, well, I'm still sorta trying to figure that out... http://modernistcuisine.com/cooks/forum/traditional-techniques/determing-when-a-brine-is-complete/#p1293 Sorry I don't have more info on the smoking, but that sounds like a great idea! Hope I helped

[Anonymous Modernist 2976]

Thanks for reminding me of the section on brining turkey because I was planning to use the MC discussion on roasting a chicken in a combi oven. At the moment, I have just injected a chicken as a test for a turkey with a 5 percent brine equal to 5 percent of the weight of the chicken. I am using apple and oak pellets in a perforated basket in a gas Weber barbecue adjusting the temperature to 250 F with a pan of water for humidity.

Here in Michigan with the temperature staying at about 36 F, the chicken took 3 1/2 hours to get to 161 F. But, it was quite tasty though the skin, as expected, was touch. Even though I injected the chicken breast just before putting it on the grill, the texture of the breast meat was too soft --- it lost some of its texture. I'm not sure if the solution is to use a higher or possibly even a lower concentration of salt. A few years ago Harold McGee had a column in the NYTimes in which he said that the trade-off with brining is that the texture of the meat changes.

Please let me know if you discover anything interesting with your experiment.

[Anonymous Modernist 2103]

Well, I gave it a shot. Cooked it at 136 F for 12 hours Sous Vide after brining the turkey wing for a day. It was good, but it was a little saltier than I would like, probably because 1 day was too long for brining just a wing? As far as the texture goes, it didn't really fall apart like I thought it would, it wasn't mushy or anything, more like a deli meat maybe or corned beef. I wasn't able to debone the turkey wing either... I'm going to try this again, but this time I'm going to try the recipe on 4-33, with a cure instead of a brine.