I do have a large deep All-Clad roasting pan - I think it’ll be okay but I may bag it anyway, just for safety. The turkey just looks so big in it.
Anybody air dry the turkey? (In the fridge after brining, say?) I’ve heard that improves the color and texture of the skin.
I pat mine dry with paper towels, and then grease 'er up with coconut oil (but you can use Crisco if you like). The oil on the skin gets hotter than the air in the oven, and essentially fries the very top layer of the skin.
At casa de Rick we only cook 20+ lb birds (we looooove turkey)
For brining, I do one of three things, I will either use a ziplock brining bag (from the grocery store or Williams Sonoma), or I have both a 12 qt., and an 18qt. food prep tubs I guess is how I would describe them. I bought the tubs at a restaurant supply place for about $10 or so a few years back.
A 20 lb bird is a bit of a tight fit in the 12 qt. it fits fine in the 18. The ziplock bag when I can find them render this moot, although I sometimes put the bag inside one of the tubs to contain any spills or leaks.
Oven bags DO NOT work for brining bags. Ask me how I know this one. 
I know the OP said the bird was not frozen, but for everyone else out there, brining doesn’t seem to defrost the bird the way you think it might. A little frosty is fine, it works great, but if the bird is hard as a rock, you wind up with a 1/2 brined bird, and the rest of it still frozen. Again ask me how I know this.
Er, actually they do work OK… I’ve done it at least 6 times now I do admit, their seal isn’t perfect but I’ve never had more than a small amount of leakage, and that’s what the roasting pan is for. Then again, the largest turkey I get is 16ish pounds; your 20-pounders might not fit so well.
I’m glad you mentioned the zip-loc brining bags - I vaguely recall seeing them at Whole Foods a few weeks ago and didn’t look too closely as I already had the oven bags. They might well be easier, especially with getting them to seal tightly. I’ll keep an eye out for those in the future.
All I can tell you is the one time I tried it the bag leaked like a sieve. :smack: I had to decant the brine, run to the store and get a ziplock bag.
Yep. I generally brine the bird overnight in a large Igloo cooler with lots of gel freezer packs (to keep it at a sufficiently low temp) on Tuesday, and on Wednesday take it out, pat dry with paper towels, then take my largest rimmed cookie sheet, put a roasting rack or a large cooling rack on it, then put the bird on that and put in the fridge overnight – the rimmed cookie sheet is to catch any brine or other liquid that drips out. This dries out the skin, which has absorbed considerable extra water during the brining, without really affecting the meat inside. Last year was the first chance I’ve had to combine this brining technique with using a convection oven. Really worked great, and the color and crispness of the skin were beautiful – really could have had a starring role in a food porn production. Even at only 325 degrees, the whole bird – even the thighs – was done perfectly in less time than I expected – 45 minutes or so faster.
My mother-in-law generally does Thanksgiving at her house, so I’ve only had a few opportunities to do the whole thing – once a few years ago when she returned from a trip overseas late afternoon on Thanksgiving Day, and last year – my wife’s brother and his wife had just moved to a new house only 4 miles from us, so the other brother’s family and the parents came down to our place. This year, my wife’s brother’s mother-in-law is also coming, and so my mother-in-law is having this turf war with her about who’s cooking what – at our house. I’m in Montreal until tomorrow night, so I’ve been hors de combat but for my wife and kids it’s sort of like being Belgium – where the superpowers come to have their wars with each other. Anyway, my mother-in-law has complained in the past about the fact that I’ve brined the bird (it makes it too salty, it’s bad for my father-in-law’s high blood pressure, it contributes to global warming, it’s what killed off the dinosaurs, whatever). This year, however, her oracle Martha Stewart recommended brining on a recent show, so all of a sudden it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law. Martha said to use wine in the brine also. OK. But my M-i-L being (a) Jewish and (b) essentially a tee-totaler has decided she’s going to use what she has instead of buying wine just to bathe a bird and then throw it away, and that means . . . you guessed it – Manischewitz. My wife and one of the sisters-in-law have been alternating between trying to talk her out of this (a pointless exercise in my experience – it frustrates you and annoys her) and joking about the prospect of having a purple bird on the table this year. I’m resisting the urge to claim that my flight home got canceled – so far.
I’ve always used a clean 5-gallon bucket from a place like Home Depot, and I’ve never had a problem. It’s much easier to just submerge it for brining.
I’ve also always used the cooking bags when roasting it, and they always fit just fine, even with 20-pounders. I would think trying to brine it in a bag would be messy, but if it works for you, then that’s great.
You…throw…the…carcass…away…:eek:…:(.
CMC +fnord!
Update on brining bags: We got one yesterday and it does look like it seals better than the oven bags, and it’s big enough to handle a larger turkey / more brine than my recipe generates.
In fact, try as I might, I didn’t feel like I could get enough air out of it to make it “small” enough to cover the turkey well enough for brining. I wound up using a plastic bag-clip (not the spring-loaded “chip clips” but rather one that closes something like a barrette) to close it much nearer the turkey. It might work “unmodified” if I had a larger quantity of brine (maybe doublng the recipe); the package did say it would work with up to 2 gallons of brine. I did, per the instructions, put the whole assembly in a roasting pan in the fridge.
All in all, I’d definitely consider using the brining bags again.
Cooks Illustrated likes the Ziplock XL storage bags (the kind made for stashing sweaters and whatnot) for brining - they’re thick and sturdy, have a flat bottom so they’re easier to fill, and have a handle to ease transport to the fridge. I think I’ll try this for our post-Thanksgiving “we need leftovers too” meal this year.
Alton did a brined turkey this year using one of those giant orange drink coolers. In the past, we’ve used our plain old rectangular Coleman, with Alton’s recipe (which calls for ice, so you don’t have to try to calculate the dilution factor). It was pretty easy, and cleaned up nicely between the drainage spout in the bottom and a little bleach solution.
Okay, here’s how it worked out - I got the Cook’s Illustrated reccommended sweater bags, made Mama Zappa’s brine, and eep! It doesn’t even come close to covering the turkey! I think it’s because of the extra “room” in the bottom of the bag, so I have a moment of inspiration - I completely forgot about my canning kettle! So I drag that out and it fits if I take out two shelves. I dump the turkey and brine in and… shit, it still isn’t enough brine. My turkey must be freaking ridiculous. I had to cobble together a bunch more liquid - I tossed in some more apple juice and some more water and dumped more salt in, figured it would probably turn out okay, but damn! I’m sure it isn’t the recipe’s fault at all.
Point being, the sweater bags are actually really good and would have worked fine without even having to take shelves out, the issue was the turkey and brine. The bags even have handles in them - I’ll use one next year.
So? How’d the turkey work out?
Ours was nice. THe special brining bag that Rick mentioned worked OK for us and would probably have handled a 20+ pound turkey (it claimed to hold a “large turkey” plus 2 gallons brine). The advantage in my mind of a bag vs. a pot is, as you discovered, the pot has a lot more wasted room and it’s harder to get the turkey covered. Not that my bird got completely covered in the bag, but since I laid it down in a roasting pan, I turned it over every 12ish hours to get a different part submerged.
The brining bag had more wasted space, I think - harder to get the extra air pressed out than with the baking bags I used in earlier years - but all in all worked well enough.
Dad proclaimed it the best turkey we’ve ever had. And he’s 76, so that’s a lot of turkeys! Seriously, it turned out awesome. Not to mention gorgeous - I love the darker look. Don’t know if it was the brine or the fancy-ass turkey or what, but it was a big hit. (Of course, we have mountains left, and my dad was about to kill my half-brother and family because they ate before they came over, grr.)
Excellent!
Pssst: get that carcass in a big soup pot with a few onions, stalks of celery, carrots, peppercorns and bay leaves ASAP and boil it for a few hours. Remove most of the meat first of course; you’ll salvage some from the soup pot when you strain out the bones etc. but that meat won’t have any flavor left and won’t be fit for anything but adding back to the soup. I’m guessing it’s the slightest hint of the brining spices that makes that soup tastier than any other I’ve made. Mmmmmmm… turkey soupy goodness. Once I get rid of all the undesirable stuff, I boil it for a while longer with some fresh chopped carrots / celery and some of the meat; when we want to eat it, we cook noodles either separately or in a small potful of just enough soup for that meal.
…what else are you supposed to do with it? 
You make stock, or go farther with it and make soup.
Huh? What wasted room?
I brined mine in a drywall bucket as I always do, (cleaned, of course!) and the entire turkey was submerged, except for a little bit of its butt end and the very tips of the drumsticks. No turning required.
It wasn’t harder to get the turkey covered - it was completely covered in brine. Soaked 12 hours fully submerged in brine, and I never had to touch it.
But, you have to have enough brine to fill the bucket then; 2-3 gallons maybe? All the space where the turkey isn’t. Using a bag in a roasting pan may require turning but it requires less brine overall (e.g. my recipe makes a tad under a gallon) and fits better in a fridge, if that’s what’s required where you are.
The bucket approach would be great if we had a place to safely store that while brining.
The bucket wasn’t filled to the top - it had enough brine to cover the turkey. Maybe 2 gallons at most. Definitely not more than that.
I follow Alton Brown’s recipe, but increase the veggie stock a little since I usually need a bit more to cover a larger turkey. I’ve always done birds that are at least 20 pounds.