More Yule Birds

[flemmings]

I brined my turkey as per the web's instructions: 1 cup kosher salt per gallon of water. Brined for 12 hours (some people say 1-2 days for a turkey, but I'll go with 'no more than 24 hours.') Cooked yesterday afternoon, which kept me indoors when I wanted to be out. Drat that no more than 24 hours thing. Result was salty nearly inedible turkey and salty quite inedible bread stuffing. No idea why. Not a self-basting turkey, no huge quantities of salt in the stuffing. A mystery. The stuffing I suppose is 'saved from the evil to come.' (I don't need to eat a half loaf of bread in two days, and I would if it had been edible.) The white meat makes decent salad and probably will do a decent turkey fricassee. The dark meat I've frozen for some future use. After the equally disappointing chicken soup that resulted from my capon, I don't feel like making turkey soup. Luckily tonight is garbage night and the temperatures are arctic, so stuffing and bones and old soup can all go into the green bin outside where they will freeze quite unmolested by raccoons.

And I shall stick to broccoli and tofu stir fries in future.

Comments

[incandescens]

How excessively annoying. Much sympathy.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

A learning opportunity, no doubt.

The haiku book is quite fascinating, in my fashion of 'read the transliterated Japanese, fail to figure out what it means, read the Japanese, say 'oh- OK', read the English and think 'no no *no* you don't need *half* those words.' I mean, you do, to express all the ideas wrapped up in the succinct Japanese, but the whole point is not to express those ideas overtly.

There's a reason I'm not a professional translator.

[incandescens]

The intended audience of the translation would have to be a major factor, I think. Between you who knows that the ideas are not to be expressed overtly, and the audience who is not even aware what said ideas should be in context, there must lie a gap, and I am not sure how to bridge it to produce a translation that would satisfy both.

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

Do you know I'd never heard of this brining the turkey process. (I had to google it) . Perhaps where I've been is where birds come ready prepared for cooking so no need for such a step.

But I found a webpage

http://bbq.about.com/cs/turkey/a/aa110103a.htm

That does recommend a little sweetening of the brine, to counter balance the saltiness and 10-12 hours, erring on the side of not enough is better than too much.

But yes brocoli and tofu stir fries is much less hassle free. Next year I mught suggest to hubby that we go somewhere nice to eat. ^__^ Although we did ok, and I did have help. I mostly like to do things by myself and tend to tut and tsk at people when I delegate work (because they're not doing whatever the correct way - in my eyes only of course), so it's counter productive.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

The birds here are theoretically already prepared for cooking too, just that freezing (if frozen) tends to dry them out. Brining was adopted as a way of returning moisture to otherwise desiccated birds and/or factory farmed turkeys. It's worked for me before, so I have no idea why it didn't this time.