Out of This World Turkey Brine Recipe

My first attempt at doing a brine and I will NEVER prepare a turkey any other way from now on. This definitely was out of this world, moist and tasty. It was very easy to do also. I just bought a new 5 gallon pail, mixed up the brine and plopped the bird down inside. Covered it and put it in the garage overnight, then roasted using Alton Brown's method (from Food Network) which was to start it in the oven at 500 degrees for the first 30 minutes, then turned it down to 350 degrees for the remainder. Awesome, phenomenal....best turkey I ever put in my mouth!!!

This is the perfect base for killer smoked, deep fried or even oven roasted turkey. I just bought a new 5-gallon bucket with lid that I could put in a cold corner of my garage for 3 days. Just remember to drain and dry your turkey extremely well before cooking by any methods. Even the breast meat comes out as tender and as juicy as dark meat!

I have been brine-ing my holiday turkeys for years-they are always raved over! My recipe is very similar to this one except I use 1/2 cup kosher salt per 4 cups of water (omit the soysauce). So for a 20# turkey I used 2 cups kosher salt and 16 cups (2 gallons) water. I brine the turkey 40 minutes per pound (too long and the bird will start to turn mushy). Herbs will get lost in the brine so mash them with some butter and tuck them under the skin. This recipe will also brine a large pork loin or other meat. Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

I cut this recipe in half and used it for a 3-4lb. chicken. Left it in the solution for maybe 8 hours then oven roasted it (unstuffed) at 375 for 1 1/2 hours. Absolutely delicious! Possibly the best roast chicken I have ever made. It also made great chicken sandwiches a couple of days later.

Excellent brine. Not too salty. I'm no big fan of Worcestershire but it added a nice depth to the flavor. I added oranges and lime to mine, too. It was perfect amount for my 15 lb. turkey that I put into a 5 gal. drink picnic thermos. As this was right after the Blizzard of 2009, I just sank the covered thermos into a 2 foot snowbank and it stayed nice and cold! I let it brine for about 24 hours. I did rinse the bird several times and then let it soak about an hour in clear cold water after rinsing to get excess salt off of it before baking. The drippings were then suitable for making gravy and the gravy wasn't overly salty.

This really, really, really is amazing! Our Christmas turkey was super juicy and moist that when hubby carved the turkey, it squirted him in the face. Eeek. We got a 10lb frozen turkey that we defrosted in the fridge for 3 days then brined for 2. We did change some stuff in the brine. What we did was add a whole big onion, a sprig of rosemary from the garden, and more garlic, mixed all the ingredients and cooked everything in the saucepan. We then put the mix into the rest of the water and poured it into the thick black garbage bag with the turkey waiting in it. We made sure we burped the cavity and the entire bag of air so the whole turkey is submerged. When we were ready to cook, we RINSED the turkey off thoroughly and patted dry. Then on the pan, rubbed dried thyme and basil all over the bird. Made a tin foil tent over the turkey as it cooked. For a 10lb bird, we cooked at 175C for 4.5hours, covered, and undisturbed. Then for the last 30minutes, opened the tent up to let butter melt on the skin, and loosely put the tent back on. It was amazing. We also ended up with almost 2 medium-sized saucepan worth of gravy from the drippings. The gravy too was superb!

I've brined turkeys for years. Rinse the brine off the turkey before cooking(be sure to sanitize your work surfaces). It took me one extra salty turkey one Thanksgiving to learn that. After a thorough rinse inside and out, rub the turkey with unsalted butter and add celery, apples and onions to the cavity. Salt problem solved. I've had perfect turkeys ever since. I'm not sure why the recipe authors and cooks don't add this simple step to instructions.

What a great brine method, I brine Turkey all the time, so moist and full of flavors doesn’t taste like a turkey, we did the brine and we spatchcock the Turkey and put it on the grill on low heat… was amazingly good!

This recipe is great! I used kosher salt and warmed the mixture in 1/2 gal. of water, then let cool, before adding the remaining 1.5 gal. I brined for 10-12 hours, rinsed, stuffed the cavity with a large onion and 2 lemons (halved), then smoked according to Traeger's recipe.

To Paulette Broadbent: If your turkey turned out too salty, it’s because the size of the salt grains or ‘corns’ that you used were too small. You want to use large grain salt, such as kosher salt, or large grain sea salt. Never use fine grained salt for a recipe like this, because it doubles the amount of salt in the recipe. If all you have is fine grained salt, you need to cut the amount of salt in half. I hope this helps someone. Have a wonderful thanksgiving!!!

I doubled this brine for a 20 pound turkey and soaked it for 12 plus hours. My husband slathered it with some seasoning and bourbon maple syrup and smoked it on the Traeger at 250. It was done in 5.5 hours and was juicy and delicious! Even better since I didn’t have to worry about over cooking it and taking up oven space!!!!

Didn't change a thing in the recipe and use this every year.

Came out very tender but VERY salty. I even rinsed it thoroughly after the brine and still came out salty. It was tolerable but couldn’t eat too much in one sitting. Will be trying an alternate recipe next time.

Made it for my book club — everyone asked for the recipe.

There is nothing in the recipe about rinsing off the brine before cooking or smoking the turkey. Ours was so salty I end up throwing it away.

Great brine! I was only able to let it soak about 15 hours or so and it was great! This was the first time I'd brined a turkey but it definitely won't be my last.

This brine was very simple to do and my family loved it. They couldn't stop talking about how moist the turkey breast was. I had all of the ingredients on hand. Thanks!

I used this recipe to do a medium size turkey breast. I brined the breast overnight and added a light amount of spice blend to the outside before cooking it on my Weber for about two hours. I added a light amount of mesquite for smoke flavor. It came out good, but a bit saltier than I liked. I'd cut the salt back next time, maybe by a half cup and not use the spice mix.

Made it twice this week — obsessed.

Moist flavorful turkey every time, use it on chicken too. don't need a rub or any additional seasoning....unless you want a different flavor than the turkey.