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something else going on here To understand what’s really happening, you have to look at the structure of turkey muscles Muscles are made up of long bundled fibers, each one housed in a tough protein sheath As the meat heats, the proteins that make up these sheaths will contract Just like a squeezing a tube of toothpaste, this causes juices to be forced out of the bird Heat the bird to much above 150°F or so, and you end up with dry, stringy meat Salt helps mitigate this shrinkage by dissolving some of the muscle proteins (mainly myosin) The muscle fibers loosen up, allowing them to absorb more moisture and, more important, they don’t contract as much when heated, ensuring that more of that moisture stays in place as the turkey cooks Sounds great, right? But there’s a catch The Problems with Brining There are two major problems with brining First off, it’s a major pain in the butt Not only does it require that you have a vessel big enough to submerge an entire turkey (common options are a cooler, a big bucket, or a couple of layered heavy-duty garbage bags tied together with hopes and prayers against breakage), but it also requires that you keep everything inside it—the turkey and the brine—cold for the entire process With an extra-large bird, this can be for as long as a couple of days, meaning that you either give up using the main compartment of your fridge at the time of year that you most need it or you keep a constant supply of ice packs or ice rotating around the bird to keep it cold Second, as Harold McGee once pointed out to me, brining robs your bird of flavor Think about it: The turkey is absorbing water and holding on to it That 30 to 40 percent savings in moisture loss is not really turkey juices—it’s plain old tap water Many folks who eat brined birds have that very complaint: it’s juicy, but the juice is watery I’d seen a few solutions (solutions, get it? ha-ha) offered for this problem, so I decided to test them all out side by side I ran my tests on chicken breasts, which have essentially the same fat content and protein structure as turkey breasts but are smaller and easier to work with Brining Solutions By far the most common alternative to wet-brining is plain old salting (i.e., dry-brining) When you salt a turkey or chicken breast, meat juices are initially drawn out through the process of osmosis As the salt dissolves in the juices, it forms what amounts to a very concentrated brine; see “How to Dry-Brine a Bird,” here I’ve also heard people ask the very obvious question, “If brining introduces bland, boring tap water into the bird, why not brine in a more flavorful solution?” Why not indeed? I decided to find out Here’s what I tried: • Sample #1: Plain (untreated) • Sample #2: Brined overnight in a 6% salt solution • Sample #3: Heavily salted overnight • Sample #4: Brined overnight in chicken broth with a 6% salt content • Sample #5: Brined overnight in cider with a 6% salt content ... out through the process of osmosis As the salt dissolves in the juices, it forms what amounts to a very concentrated brine; see “How to Dry-Brine a Bird,” here I’ve also heard people ask the very obvious question, “If... the same fat content and protein structure as turkey breasts but are smaller and easier to work with Brining Solutions By far the most common alternative to wet-brining is plain old salting (i.e.,... that very complaint: it’s juicy, but the juice is watery I’d seen a few solutions (solutions, get it? ha-ha) offered for this problem, so I decided to test them all out side by side I ran my tests
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