How to Brine a Turkey

Planning yourThanksgivingmeal leaves you with a lot of choices. Which sides to serve; how much亚搏电竞to get for the table; topieor not to pie. (The answer is always yes.) While we can’t figure out yourentireday for you, we can help out with themenuand share some advice. And in this case, we’re diving into how to brine a turkey.

You might be wondering why you’d want to brine a turkey in the first place, as not all recipes call for it. One key reason is the taste—whether you wet-brine or dry-brine, using all! that! salt! infuses the bird with flavor, giving it an extra boost before you add any spices or aromatics. It also helps the meat retain its moisture and can help you avoid over-cooking, our associate food editorKelsey Youngman解释。

“可能是担心人病重keys on Thanksgiving is dry meat, aside from undercooking it,” she says. “And a brine is a really great way, even if you go a few degrees over your desired cooking temperature, if you forget the turkey in the oven for some reason [to help avoid over-cooking]. You have a much greater range where you’re still going to have moist, delicious meat because that salt is in there.”

Preventing a dry turkey definitely sounds worth it, right? We think so, too. So we tapped Youngman to share her tips for turkey brining and created a helpful guide for everything you need to know about the process, from picking out a turkey at the store (hint: avoid salt-processed ones) to pulling off both wet and dry brines. She also provides suggestions for adding even more flavor to the bird post-brining, and has a helpful day-of tip from our culinary director-at-large,Justin Chapple，如果你没有时间盐水。继续阅读她的建议。

Before you get to cooking your turkey, you’ll need to pick one out in the first place—and if you’re brining, the kind of turkey you choose matters. Youngman recommends using a heritage or organic turkey and avoiding kosher, self-basting, and water-added turkeys, since they’ve been infused with salt already. “Kind of think about it like salted or unsalted butter,” she says. “It’s not bad that those turkeys are processed with salt, but you have no way of knowing how salty they are before you cook them.” Using a heritage or organic turkey, on the other hand, allows you to control how much salt you add to the bird. For more tips, read our购买指南最好的火鸡。

不管你是用盐水浸泡干或湿用盐水浸泡,Youngman says you’ll want to use “about a little over a tablespoon of kosher salt to about four pounds of turkey.” For a traditional 12- to 14-pound bird, she recommends about 3 1/2 tablespoons of kosher salt. Make sure to use Diamond Crystal kosher salt rather than another variety of kosher salt (or table salt)—since the size of salt crystals vary, the saltiness of a spoonful of salt varies too.

年轻人说，在烹饪之前，你会提前几天盐肾上了几天。虽然你可以在一夜之间盐水，但“两到三天是味道的甜蜜点。”

To wet brine, Youngman says you’ll need “either acooler或者是一片非常大的冰箱，“由于你必须包含火鸡，请保持完全淹没在盐水中，and保持冷酷覆盖。干净，食品安全的五亚搏电竞到八加仑桶应该足以容纳它，她说 - 使用一个带有“光滑的塑料内饰”，所以它很容易清洁。或者，尝试一个Cambro container，可在餐厅供应商店找到。一种Yeti coolercould work as well.

Whichever you choose, fill your container with water and the salt. To help the dissolution process along, you could warm some of the water separately first and dissolve the salt in there (the warm water will help the salt "dissolve more readily," Youngman says) before adding that mixture to the rest of the cool water. But it’s not necessary. If you do go that route, be sure the water is cold when you put the turkey in; adding it to hot water would lead to food-safety issues.

resring是关于科学的。“当你重生的时候，盐将水分从肉中拉出水分，然后用渗透物在渗透，基本上是以渗透的，基本上是”的主要过程“。”“所以肉中已经有水分，你只是为咸液交换它来增加味道，[和]保持肉质和肉中的温柔。”

确保有足够的水，使土耳其完全淹没（年轻人说你可以通过用板或另一个重物来称量它来确保这一点）。最重要的成分是盐和水，但如果你愿意，年轻人说，你也可以随意添加香料和调味料，如辣椒，海湾叶，百里香或鼠尾草。However, she points out that “it’s not really where the major flavor is going to come in”—those accoutrements won’t really infuse in the cold water—and recommends waiting to add additional flavor until after the brining process is complete, before roasting. Cover the turkey and keep it cold, whether you’re storing it in a container in the fridge or brining it in a cooler kept cold.

Try This Recipe:Roasted Salt-Brined Turkey

另一方面，干燥的是，基本上是湿润的水和容器 - 而不是将盐混合到水中，而是将其直接摩擦到鸟类上。年轻人更喜欢干燥，因为她认为这更容易，占用更少的空间，“导致品尝最终产品”。奖金：它可以帮助您实现这种超脆皮的皮肤。

You’ll need a large rimmed baking sheet, a wire rack, and something to cover the bird: Either cheesecloth,flour sack towels，塑料包装，甚至是一个turkey-sized oven bag覆盖鸟。就像湿润的时候一样，土耳其需要保持冷，但谢天谢地，盐覆盖的火鸡不会在冰箱里占用冰箱的房间，作为一个充满水的大容器andturkey.

To start, grab your salt and rub it on and under the skin of the turkey, as well as inside the cavity. Getting it under the skin, Youngman says, will help permeate the meat and flavor it, while salting on top of the skin will help dry it out and get it crispy. You could theoretically rub on spices and seasonings at this point, too, but again, your best bet is waiting until after you’ve brined the turkey.

Once the turkey is seasoned, place it on the rack set inside the rimmed baking sheet and put it in the refrigerator. Youngman likes to cover it for the first part of the brining period (“that’s going to trap the salt to the bird”) and then uncover it the night before to help dry out the skin.

“I just can’t recommend dry brining enough,” Youngman says. “I think it’s more effective, tastier, easier, and it’s just better.”

Try This Recipe:Dry-Brined Spatchcocked Turkey

Your bird is going to be cold post-brining, and you need to let it come to room temperature before you roast it, Youngman says. Otherwise, the turkey won’t cook as quickly or evenly as it could. Youngman recommends removing the turkey from the refrigerator about an hour before cooking.

Regardless of which brining method you use, you’ll also want to pat your bird dry, since it will be wet. Use paper towels and get the skin “as dry as possible” before doing anything else. And if you’re wondering, no—you don’t need to rinse the bird, whether it’s been dry-brined or wet-brined, before adding more seasoning and roasting. Again, the bird needs to be dry, and Youngman also notes “it’s not particularly sanitary to wash meat in the sink.”

一旦你的鸟儿烧伤和拍打干燥，你都可以添加更多的味道，并且有plentyof ways to do it. You could roughly chop up aromatics like carrots, celery, and onions and place them in the pan under the bird while it roasts, which would not only flavor the turkey, but the pan juices as well, giving your gravy a boost. Plus, placing the turkey on top of the cut-up aromatics helps the hot air circulate around it, Youngman says, and helps it cook evenly. The same can be done with cut-up pieces of citrus, heads of garlic, other alliums like shallots or leeks, and sprigs of herbs too.

另一条途径包括通过用草药，香料和/或柑橘Zest-youngan混合黄油来创造芳香黄油，说她喜欢服用鼠尾草，百里香和牛至，用黄油砍掉它们，用黄油捣碎它们。（她使用两汤匙室温黄油，为12-14磅的鸟，在烹饪前摩擦干燥的土耳其皮肤的味道。或者，只需将香料和草药直接擦到鸟儿上。如果您有一个最喜欢的香料混合，您可以随意擦去它或用黄油混合。只要避免添加更多的盐，她注意到，因为你在重生过程中已经盐撒了鸟。

Youngman says that if you’re pressed for time day-of and don’t have time to brine in advance, mayonnaise is a good option, since it will “add salt and flavor, add fat, and insulate the bird, making it super moist and juicy.” It’s a tip Justin Chapple uses in his recipe and accompanying how-to video forslathering turkey with chipotle mayonnaise在皮肤下面，导致“超多汁，美味的肉”。这道菜是几个让它进入我们的mayo-centric Thanksgiving menu, in case you’re a big fan of the condiment like we are.

In short, whether you dry-brine, wet-brine, or rely on a last-minute coating of mayo, taking these steps will help ensure your bird comes out of the oven juicy, crispy, and ready to impress. We’ve included a few links to turkey recipes above, but you can find many, many more, ranging from Justin Chapple’sclementine-and-garlic roast turkeyto Kristen Kish’s醋 - 烤烤火鸡， 在我们的best Thanksgiving turkey recipe roundup。Happy cooking!