Thawing / Brining Your Turkey

Thawing

You should be comfortable about being creative about what you use to brine or thaw the turkey in. You might put out the nice plates and silverware when company is over but there's no need to get fancy at this stage. We usually recommend putting the turkey in a thick plastic garbage bag (or 5 gallon bucket from a big box store) to brine and then in a cooler in an unheated garage or porch if you don't have enough room to fit it in the fridge.

If you keep the turkey in a cooler, it will be fine at room temperature for at least a day. You just don't want the bird to go over about 40 degrees. When you think about it: a giant block of ice in a cooler like that would take a day to thaw. Your turkey isn't that different. If you monitor the temperature during the day, you would be able to leave it in the cooler inside, on say, Tuesday, then in the fridge overnight and then outside Wednesday.

Need to Thaw Faster?

Reading this on the day before Thanksgiving and need to thaw your frozen turkey more quickly? Submerge it in cold water (not warm water) and you can have it thawed in about 8-12 hours. You'll want to continue to monitor the temperature and change out the water every 30 minutes.

If you've thawed it in cold water, be sure to cook it immediately after thawing.

Bonus tip: Circulation speeds up the thawing processing. A steady dribble of cold water can help keep the water circulating.)

You will want to keep the turkey overnights in the fridge since you won't be able to monitor the temps throughout the night.

Also, remember when taking the temperature that turkeys thaw on the outside first, then on the inside!

Brining

Prepping your bird ahead of time helps it to stay more tender and juicy when cooking it.

Combine the following into a large pot or bag big enough to fully submerge your turkey:

1 cup of salt
2 gallons of cold water (or ideally a veggie broth made by simmering a few each of celery, onion, and carrot plus a bulb of garlic and bit of ginger for around 10 hours)
If you use water instead of broth, add the chopped veggies to the water (or juice them)
Turkey roast (whole turkey or just white meat plus ribcage)

Keep the turkey covered in the brine and refrigerated for 1-3 days.

We've also found that Alton Brown's brining / preparation tips are pretty fantastic! He uses a 5 gallon bucket for his brining. You can pick them up at any big box store.

In Alton Brown's recipe, he thaws the bird and then brines it. We would personally thaw the bird in the brine itself.