The Truth About Brining Turkey | Hacker News Reader

The Truth About Brining Turkey

seriouseats.com

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If you don't want dry turkey, stop overcooking it. It's as simple as that. So many people don't even take it out until it hits 180 degrees F. That's crazy! Not overcooking is one of the keys to pretty much anything you want to cook, actually. Also, use an oven bag, which traps all the moisture in the bag. Comes out great when I make it that way, no need for basting or anything. Learned about not overcooking from Mark Bittman:

> At least one reader has expressed concern that a turkey will not be done if its internal temperature is less than 165, as the U.S.D.A. recommends. The recipe calls for temperature of 155 because salmonella is killed at 140 (as long as it’s held there for 12 minutes). Further, if turkey is cooked to 155, its temperature will rise to 165 or higher while resting. A temperature of 165 isn’t unreasonable, but the turkey’s temperature will rise to 175 or 180 before serving, and that’s overcooked. If you’re more comfortable cooking to higher temperatures, feel free, but expect drier meat. [1]

[1] Mark Bittman - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/magazine/classic-roast-tur...

> If you don't want dry turkey, stop overcooking it.

A thousand times, this. Whether you're cooking chicken, turkey, pork, beef, eggs, or anything else solid built on a protein matrix, overcooking will result in a dry and tough end product[+].

+ - The notable exception being very long-cooked proteins, which do relax and become tender again, but require the presence of fat and/or collagen and/or sauce to maintain the experience of juiciness.

> If you don't want dry turkey, stop overcooking it. It's as simple as that.

I'll agree with that.

But for a food that most people cook maybe once or twice a year, in a woefully finicky home oven, on what many consider the most stressful day of the year, I consider brining/salting a very acceptable insurance policy.

  > ... in a woefully finicky home oven ...

This is a very good point. Older ovens often have inaccurate thermostats. Getting a cheap ancillary oven thermometer can make a big difference.

It's not so clear cut as that(though I will concede that being mindful of carryover is an important point).

The problem with turkey is that the breast and thigh meat are really quite different. The former being leaner has an ideal cooking temp of ~150 and the latter having more connective tissue is better at ~165-170. It wasn't until just a few years ago the FDA revised their safe cooking recommendation of 165 for the breasts and 180 for the thighs to just 165 for the whole bird. Brining caught on because it allowed an acceptable degree of overcooking the breast until the thighs were done.

I believe the current ideal method on cooking turkey these days is salting vs brining and using ice packs on the breasts to create a ~20 degree gap between the breasts and the thighs before putting it into the oven.

Ideally, we would just break up the whole bird and cook it according to the cut, but tradition dictates a whole bird. I butterflied / spatchcocked my turkey last year.

I used to overcook meat, being paranoid about undercooking. I started using a meat thermometer and seeing just how much the temp will rise once taken of the heat. So I am sure to remove from heat a few degrees prior to the done temperature. The results are much better. A big turkey, particularly a stuffed one, can be hard to not overcook some of the meat. I actually made an online meat temperature guide after doing a new search every time I cooked: http://www.donetemperature.com

> If you don't want dry turkey, stop overcooking it. It's as simple as that.

It is not that simple. The flavor certainly changes as more of the proteins get denatured. 180 is where you get ideal tenderness and the best meat flavor, but it is damn hard to keep it moist at that temperature. I don't think it is possible in an oven.

The best way to cook a turkey is to fry it under pressure. I like the pot, lid, and cinderblock method, but it is quite dangerous and the temperature is hard to control.

J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is easily my favorite food blogger. I read just about everything he writes because he ALWAYS puts in this level of effort and detail. Towards the bottom of this page is his list of posts:

http://www.seriouseats.com/user/profile/GoodEaterKenji

If you found this post fascinating, there are plenty more like it.

If you are not listening to Cooking Issues, even if you don't really cook much, you are seriously missing out. Cooking Issues is amazing.

podcast?

Yep, Heritage Radio Network. Extremely great.

The blog is a great resource as well and they finally fixed it last month. Also, Dave Arnold's boneless biotic turkey: http://www.cookingissues.com/category/turkey/

I like Kenji, but he's wrong about osmosis. Specifically, this claim "Moreover, if you soak a turkey in a ridiculously concentrated brine (I tested turkey in a 35% salt solution), according to the osmosis theory, it should dry out even more." is completely wrong.

Osmosis works not only for water, but for the solutes themselves. Water doesn't just (or even initially) move into the cells: salt, in fact, is what initially osmotes into the cells (they have membrane pumps for equalizing sodium concentration across the cell boundary), and then water follows, in order to equalize overall solute concentration. That's why you see the turkey take on water even when placed in a concentrated brine.

Do these cell pumps work even when the cell is dead? I was under the impression that ATP was required for that.

I wouldn't think any significant form of active transport would be going on in a dead bird. Also, I think the sodium-potassium pump pumps sodium out, not in, although you could be talking about a different pump?

In the absence of any pumps going on, I would imagine a 35% solution would be extremely hypertonic compared to the interior of the cells, and water would definitely flow out.

Let him know in the seriouseats comments... He's a really cool guy and would genuinely like to learn if he's ever incorrect about something.

This was what I thought was happening as well. Even without active transport (because that turkey is dead) some salt should work its way into the tissue, after all it remains salty after a thorough washing post brine.

As far as I know the definition of osmosis is a movement of solvent across a membrane, without extra energy input, so I don't think "salt osmotes into the cells" makes sense. It would be diffusing along the gradient or undergoing active transport. I'm not a chemist, though.

He didn't try what I always do. Mix salt with spices that I think I'll like, and dry-brine with that.

The bird tastes like a bird, retains moisture, and the spices get in. Personally I have a large enough fridge that I can afford to put a bird in a garbage bag in it, so that isn't a problem.

Most garbage bags are not made of food-safe plastic, so be aware that you may be ingesting substances you don't want.

This is probably mostly an issue if you heat the bag.

No, the USDA and pretty much anyone regulating food safety agree that storing food touching non food-safe plastics is always unsafe because the bags may be made with or coated with chemicals that WILL leach into your food. This is definitely accelerated by time (which brining involves) and temperature.

Ref: http://lancaster.unl.edu/food/ftsep04.htm http://www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/big_thaw/

The USDA link about garbage bags is in a graf about leaving foods to thaw out in the open; "garbage bag" is in the middle of a list including "basement", "garage", "dishwasher", and "kitchen counter". It's not discussing plasticizers.

None of the text on the UNL page contradicts my suggestion that the risk of chemical leaching is primarily caused by heating.

Definitely don't use garbage bags if they make you uncomfortable. For years, people have also been uncomfortable about doing low temp cooks in Ziploc bags for the same reason (it turns out that this is not a valid concern, but it was a reasonable one until recently). Also! I am sure there are trash bags you definitely don't want to put food in. Some bags are scented. Some of them are stiff and sort of starchy. I'd also stick with big brands.

From the UNL page, under "Plastic trash bags for food storage":

"The use of plastic trash bags for food storage or cooking is not recommended by USDA '... because they are not food grade plastic and chemicals from them may leach into the food.'"

From Glad themselves: "We do not recommend using Glad Trash bags for food storage."

To each their own, of course. I'm happy to use zip-top bags for low-temp cooking (they are food-safe after all), but garbage bags will be reserved for use in the garbage can.

Ziploc bags are food-safe, up to something like 85C. I would not count on off-brand bags being food safe when heated.

Most grocery stores sell Turkey bags for brining, especially around Thanksgiving.

Good point. I will pay close attention to that next year.

(I just verified that the bag I used last time suggests it is not for food storage. Erk.)

The best Thanksgiving turkey I ever had was not brined but was salted and then roasted at an incredibly low temperature (~250) for many, many hours. The result was delicious, but it ties up an entire oven for most of a day, which is simply not practical for many families.

Generally speaking, if you are working on poultry, lower cooking temperatures work better. Why?

Primary constraint:

- Meat center at least safe-temperature.

Secondary constraint:

- The meat should be at the lowest temperature possible.

Within these constraints, the hotter the environment is, the more the outside of the meat is going to exceed the safe temperature, and thus the tougher it is going to be.

Except undercooked meat (however safe) is often tough.

I guess I just assumed that bringing the meat up to a safe temperature would cover that. I'm not talking about cold-roasting chicken.

Couldn't you initially microwave the turkey to bring it's internal temperature up to oven temperature and only then put it into the regular oven?

I'm not sure why, but my understanding is that microwaves are not good for flavor or texture.

I don't think a microwave could effectively heat the center. The skin depth on a turkey is probably only a couple inches so a microwave could only heat the exterior.

Microwave ovens don't heat from the outside in, like a conventional oven. Microwaves are passed through the food, and the changing magnetic field causes water and fat molecules to move through a process called dielectric heating. The rate that food heats up within a microwave is completely dependent on what it's made of, not where it is.

You are mostly correct, but I'd like to agree that the rate food heats up does depend where it is. I know this intuitively, when the middle of my burrito is cold when the rest is hot. Microwave ovens do not cook food evenly, and it's not just due to wave nodes. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_heating#Penetration

Part [0023] in particular: http://www.google.com/patents/EP1991813A2?cl=en

"Portable roaster ovens" can fit an OK sized bird and are just a bit more expensive than a good crock pot. Completely worth it to have your oven available on a busy holiday. That way you can set the turkey for any temp you want and vary your actual oven with the sets of things that cook quicker.

The only thing: they are pretty hot and could be a safety concern if not at counter height.

example: http://www.amazon.com/Nesco-4818-14-18-Quart-Porcelain-Cookw...

Judy Rodgers Zuni cookbook has great recommendations for salting vs brining. She brines poultry as well as pork in a low-salt solution for several days. I've found it to be very effective. She salts red meat for several days to tenderize and flavor.

For turkey, we've switched from the Alton Brown brining strategy to a method that involves salting overnight with a butter/herb mixture, and cooking the dark meat and white meat separately. Dark meat in a braise, breasts roasted. This has the added advantage of being able to braise the night before (even better second day) and roasting for just 1-1.5 hours the day of. We were able to completely prep for two days before this year, and I went for a bike ride Thursday morning with kids and guests, who called me a show off. Credit to David Tanis, former Chez Panisse chef for this technique.

http://leitesculinaria.com/59625/recipes-roasted-turkey-brai...

Curing red meat is probably a bad idea; it toughens and changes the color of the meet. When he was still at the French Culinary, Dave Arnold did a triangle test where he simply salted a steak prior to a low-temp cook --- he didn't leave it salting for days, just hours --- and all his tasters could identify the pre-salted meat and all preferred the non-pre-salted meat.

Another thing to bear in mind is that brining poultry will make the skin intractably flabby. You can air-dry the meat after your brine it (I had a fan setup to do that), or remove the skin prior to brining to compensate.

Well, the salient point there is "prior to a low-temp cook". In that post:

http://www.cookingissues.com/2011/10/12/to-salt-or-not-to-sa...

Arnold was using sous-vide on the steaks, which has much different cooking characteristics than high heat cooking.

I've generally found that liberally salting steaks with kosher salt up to several hours in advance of grilling or roasting improves the flavor and texture substantially. Serious Eats backs me up, here:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2011/03/the-food-lab-more-tips-fo...

In what way would the cooking characteristics of a low-temp cook exacerbate the curing effect of salt on meat, apart from the fact that low-temp cooking takes longer?

Well, in the case of sous vide it would be in a sealed bag, under pressure, cooked longer. I would hypothesize that the increased pressure would help with brine solution penetration of the meat. The sealed bag prevents moisture loss to the environment. The lengthened cooking time would mean more time for the brine solution to effect the contracting muscle filaments, and more time for the solution to be pulled into the muscle cells.

This isn't what we want. We want the salt to effect the outside of the steak the most, the portion that will be exposed to high heat when searing, because that's where the most water loss will come from.

With a slow cook in a combi oven, the characteristics would be still different.

Steaks aren't typically cooked under vacuum pressure. Dave Arnold uses Ziplocs for steak.

Not when he's going to re-therm. Also, from the post I linked above:

  A rib-eye was salted, seared, placed in a vacuum bag, 
  and cooked at 55 C for 1.5 hours, chilled, stored for 
  two days, rethermed at 52C for one hour, seared, and 
  served

I've used Alton Brown's brine recipe for the past two Thanksgivings and gotten rave reviews. In fact I may have been relegated to the "Turkey Cooker" :(

The salting method looks interesting, but I'm liking Sous Vide right now and will probably do that next time around. One bath for white meat, another for dark. Should be super moist and not lose flavor.

We had Sous Vide turkey at our company Christmas dinner last year, and was the best turkey I've ever tasted. Wonderfully moist, with a texture more like a nicely cooked pork chop than turkey, and bursting with flavour.

Cooking low temp mitigates the brining requirement because there is little chance of overcooking the meat. Also, the juices from the meat are going to be held next to it for the whole cook, and none of it will evaporate. You don't need to brine a low temp turkey.

Curing (what Kenji Lopez-Alt calls "dry brining") works just fine with a low temp cook. It's also faster.

Alton Brown's turkey brine is chock-a-block full of aromatics and spices. Kenji Lopez-Alt and the Serious Eats crew looked into this a year or so back; those flavorings do impact the very outer layer of the meat (esp. if you don't rinse thoroughly) but don't work their way into the meat; their molecules are just too large to make it through cell membranes. I brine/cure with salt and sugar and nothing else now and haven't noticed much of a difference.

Why would you brine a chicken breast for 24 hours!? Wouldn't this account for the difference in texture? With the surface area to mass ratio as one breast has that would be like brining a turkey for a month (maybe more).

Everything I've ever read says that 30-60 minutes is plenty for a breast. Even Alton Brown's fried turkey recipe [1] recommends 8-16 hours for a whole 13-14lb turkey.

The other thing not addressed in the article is the target cooking temperature and rest time. Did he pull them at the USDA-recommended 165° or did he pull them earlier and let them come up to 165°? Were the cuts allowed to rest?

1: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/deep-fried-tu...

WRT brining turkey vs aging beef it is an interesting hack that you can either dry up and intensify flavor or moisten and water down flavor using a little food science.

It is interesting that in the culinary arts there's a fixation on watering down your turkey flavor yet drying and strengthening up your beef flavor by drying/aging. An obvious next experiment would be brining up a beef steak and seeing if you like steak when its all watered down. Or a comparison run, watery beef vs dry turkey, which is "better".

Something that I think is missing is many of the traditional turkey dinner side dishes are often pretty watery, compared to traditional steak side dishes. So a dry bird is actually pretty good dining contrast with some wet homemade cranberry sauce or inherently watery green bean and almond casserole or moist mashed yams. A dinner made entirely of mush is a boring texture.

On the other hand, if you want watery poultry, experience it the easy way with ground turkey chili or diced chicken taco meat, or chicken/turkey soup. I like those too, perhaps partially because of the contrast between them and roasted meat.

Not to reopen old wounds but I probably eat more turkey dinner / steak dinner type food due to my sons medically diagnosed food allergies and my general affection for a paleo diet and coincidentally the example I usually provide in person of "what in the world is left for you to eat once you exclude everything" is usually something along the lines of think of a stereotypical thanksgiving dinner (or steak dinner) and take away the bread and you're pretty much on the right track. In that line of thinking if you don't want a dry bird you're much better off simply using a modern electronic thermometer to make sure its not over (or under) cooked than spending endless hours home processing your food. If a factory brined birds, there would be an outcry about processed foods, but its somehow better if you do it, supposedly. Actually its probably better from a contamination and food poisoning standpoint to fool with the bird as little as possible while its raw, regardless of any culinary science experiments or dietary beliefs.

That weight over time graph should really be a bar graph and not a line graph.

It's a spline graph, which is even more misleading than a line graph. Note how the control group has a small increase in weight before it's cooked.

There was a Nova episode about creating the perfect turkey. [1] They concluded that the two keys to cooking a tender and flavorful turkey were 1) brining and 2) browning the outside of the meat.

The recipe is available here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/insidenova/2012/10/the-science-...

[1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/can-i-eat-that.html

I brine chicken all the time; I think that for any white meat, it's critical in getting a result that people actually want to eat. However, brining turkey has never been an option; we're typically running up to the day on thawing the meat properly, and I don't have anything large enough to brine it in. We inject and fry it anyway, so it's plenty juicy and the flavor comes from the injection. Which can be too much flavor sometimes, but I've never had complaints... especially when you compare it to the typical oven option.

I'll definitely be trying the salting method next time, and on my chicken too. I do think this article is a bit misleading with all the bezier curves for weight loss; I imagine that came from 3 discrete data points, so buyer beware. But, if the end result is at all similar, it would definitely be the way to do turkey.

I've also heard good things about rubbing the turkey down with mayonnaise and herbs while it cooks in the oven. This apparently creates a skin texture more like fried turkey, which helps in retaining juices. I imagine this method combined with salting could produce a very tasty oven-cooked turkey.

It's definitely not critical for consistency; for boneless poultry, a coating of oil and a relatively quick cook on a very hot grill or grill pan gets fantastic results. Pounding it out to even thickness first is important for breasts or other cuts that normally vary in thickness, but thighs work phenomenally well with this method.

Brining is by no means necessary, but man, it sure can be great. It's just a matter of figuring out what your options are as far as cooking methods based on what it is you want to make.

Interesting idea. Mayonnaise is more or less colloidal eggs -n- oil so a cool extension of the mayo experiment would be to discover if superior results come from what amounts to a baking eggwash or what amounts to oil basting or is it really the combo?

Probably too early to plan experiments beyond that point without the results, but if it turns out the key is oil basting, rather than using more or less neutral oils like in mayo, it might be fun to try flavored oils. A "hot" jalapeno turkey? Maybe a nutty walnut oil basted turkey? Carotene butter basted turkey sounds weird, yet "for science" I might be willing to risk it. Of course you can make homemade mayos with the above non-neutral oils if experimentation shows the presence of eggs is required for the skin texture...

Putting up a food story like this at lunch time is dangerous, making me hungry.

I bought my wife a five gallon bucket at the local home improvement store for a few dollars. It holds your average-sized turkey just fine. Around here, in the cooler months, it hovers around 40F over night around Nov-Dec, so we let it sit outside on the back porch in the brine until morning (with a secure top, of course).

As mentioned in other comments, you should make sure it's a food-safe bucket. The orange Home Depot buckets, for example, are NOT food-safe.

Thanks, you're right. Of course, I glossed over some of the gory details, such as a bag liner in the bucket. Or, the upgrade to a substantial sized stainless steel stock pot (which can be sourced at your local restauraunt supply store).

OT: Not sure why I always look forward to these discussions on HN.

Won't mayonnaise just break in the oven? Wouldn't you be just as well off basting the bird in oil?

I've got a great recipe for mayo/sour cream-covered halibut or other white fish, oven-roasted. Not sure how well it holds up for a 5-hour turkey roasting, but at least for 1-1.5-hour cook times, mayo seems to hold up ok.

While this article piques my geek sensibilities, its conclusions on taste simply don't match my experience - brined turkey is delicious and gets rave reviews every time either I or someone else who's hosting a turkey dinner serves it.

An upvote simply for a cooking/food related article on HN. Most of us are involved in tech on a regular basis and sometimes we need a break. For me, one outlet is my garden, cooking, exploring food.

All that charting and analysis into the moisture content and none of the same into the actual taste.

The moisture charts he generated using a kitchen scale. To generate valid charts for taste, he would have to use a blind panel of skilled human tasters, which would have been much more expensive.

It's hard to chart subjective descriptions. He does describe the difference in taste/feel between different methods:

"there's a definite case of wet-sponge syndrome" "the flavor a little bland" "it's undoubtedly more juicy and well-seasoned, with a stronger chicken flavor"

Edit: s/objective/subjective/

Maybe this comment will be totally out of the context, but please, Turkey is a country whereas turkey is an animal. Please be a bit more respectful. Thanks

Context or not, I doubt disrespect was intended. The capital casing in the article title is a recognized norm in the written English language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization#Titles

I intentionally did not use the word "disrespect". Thnx for the link.

If one needs be "more respectful" then one is lacking in respect. The literal dictionary definition of disrespect is a lack of respect.

You should write to McDonalds and get them to change their menus, lest the people of Hamburg become offended.

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