Holiday Cooking - Turkey

And the holiday madness continues. Let's recap, shall we? So Thanksgiving has come and gone, and holy cow, it's Christmas already?!? My family does our Christmas celebrating on Christmas Eve, and just like Thanksgiving, the cooking of the turkey is in my skilled (I wish!) hands. Because the last turkey I made was enjoyed by everyone, I'm sticking to the tried and true brine.

The ingredients are simple enough. Vegetable broth, salt, sugar, and spices. I altered the original recipe a bit, which may be a gamble... but then again, you wash the brine off the turkey to remove the excess salt (and everything else). It's cooling down on the stove right now, and will soon bathe tomorrow's dinner with wonderful flavor.

Yes, it is a commercial turkey. No, I didn't buy it. I'm just cooking it. At first I was told it was a 25 pounder. Turns out it's only 20 pounds, but still huge. And my brining bucket plans fell through. I had to dig around to find the largest pot, and it still wasn't big enough.

The solution? Turn that sucker over mid-brine. Ideally, it should sit in the brine for 20 hours, but plans fell through (coughcoughigotlazycoughcough) and it'll be just a couple hours under that. Should still be good though.