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.