Brining is the ultimate way to cook meat, ensuring succulent, juicy meats that are tender and flavorful.

A brine is a liquid that has been salted to an exact ratio that allows the liquid to penetrate the walls of the meat cells, carrying the flavor and salt into the cell.  The salt dissolves strands of protein and causes them to fall into something like jelly, which traps that liquid inside the cell.  When the meat is cooked, more liquid stays inside, which means moist, flavorful meat.  Brilliant!  It’s like marinating on steroids, because the flavor actually goes into each individual meat cell, all the way through the meat.

Brining isn't easy, but it's worth it.  After you've had one dry, tasteless Thanksgiving turkey, you know how awful it can be.  Brining is the cure.

The night before roasting your turkey, make your brine.  You need to know how much brine to make first, so take your turkey and set it into the smallest ice chest it will fit in.  Then pour water over the turkey until the water reaches the top of the turkey.  (It may float, so you'll have to push it down to determine exactly when the water gets above the bird.)

Then pull out the turkey and pour off the water into a gallon jar or a 5 gallon bucket to determine how many gallons of brine you need to cover the bird.

Once you have that number (say...3 gallons of brine), adjust this recipe to get the correct amount:

 1 GALLON OF BRINE

     1 1/2 cups kosher salt (or 3/4 cup table salt)

     1/2 gallon apple cider

     1/2 gallon apple cider vinegar

     2 tsp baking soda

Bring a quart of apple cider to a boil, then add the salt and stir until it is completely dissolved.  In the ice chest, add the hot salty liquid to the other quart of apple cider, the half gallon of vinegar, and then add the baking soda and stir it in.  It will foam, that's okay.  (P.S. The apple cider vinegar reeks, and you'll be nervous that your turkey will taste like it, but it won't...it'll be delicious.  If you hate vinegar, like I do, you can lower the ratio of vinegar and use more cider, or even water or wine.  Just keep that 1 1/2 cups salt to 1 gallon liquid rule.)

You want the brine to be really cold before you put the turkey into it. This gets complex, so hang with me.

You can replace 1 gallon of liquid in the final brine amount with a 10-pound bag of ice.

So if you're making 3 gallons of brine, you'll use:

    4 1/2 cups kosher salt (1 1/2 cup for each gallon of brine)

    1 gallon apple cider

    1 gallon apple cider vinegar

    6 tsp baking soda

    1 10-pound bag of ice

In this recipe, the bag of ice substitutes for 1 gallon of the liquid.

SO...once your brine is ready and you've got the ice inside it, lower the turkey into the brine.  Then you can take another bag of ice, but don't open it, just set it on top of the turkey to push it down into the liquid and to help keep everything cold.

Let the turkey sit in the brine for 8 hours.  (You can brine for longer, and the bird will be saltier and juicier, but for the first time you do this, just do it for 8 hours.)

Pull the bird out of the brine and pat it dry with paper towels outside and in.

Preheat the oven to 500F.  (Yup, that's right.)

Make foil shields for the turkey. The foil shields will protect the skin from being burned while cooking at high temperatures.

First make shields for the legs.  Take a square of foil and crumple it around the meat-part of the leg.  It will make a little foil cup that you can later use to put over the leg to keep the skin from burning. 

Do the same thing with the other leg.  Then set the shields aside to use later.

Make a shield for the breast by taking a big square of foil and fold it in half cross-wise to make a triangle.

Put the point of the triangle at the far edge of the breast (the opposite side from the direction the legs point) and just smash the foil down over the whole breast until most of it is covered.

Then gently pull the foil off the breast and set it aside for later.

Now, rub the turkey all over with canola oil, getting it into all the cracks and crannies.

Then put the turkey in a sturdy roasting pan.  (If you use a cheap foil roasting pan from the grocery store, put that whole thing onto a cookie sheet or cooling rack or something to support the bottom.)

Put the turkey into the 500F oven and let it roast for 30 minutes. Remove it from the oven, lower the oven temp to 350F.

Place your foil triangle over the breast, and then push the probe of a thermometer through the foil and into the thickest part of the breast.

You want the thermometer to sit in the center of the breast meat, not touching the bone, to get the most accurate reading.  I like to use a thermometer where the probe is on the end of a cord that comes out of the oven to a little digital readout that gives me real-time information about the temp.  These cost like $15 at big discount stores.  You can get a cheaper thermometer that will sit entirely in the oven on the top of the probe for around $5. 

Push the leg shields over the legs.  Now return the bird to the 350F oven and roast until the internal temperature reaches 165F.  You can't guess on this, you have to have a thermometer.  It'll probably take another 2 hours of roasting if you have a 14 pound bird.  A smaller bird will take less time, and a larger bird will take more.  This cooks much faster than a normal turkey, so don't think you're gonna put this in the oven after breakfast and it won't be ready until dinner.  3 hours of roasting time is usually all you'll need.

When the bird reaches 165F, pull it out of the oven, leave the thermometer inside the bird, and cover it with foil.  Let it sit for at least 15 minutes, or as long as you need until it's time to carve.  Then remove the thermometer and foil shields, and carve the yummiest turkey you'll ever eat.