something else going on here. To understand what’s really
happening, you have to look at the structure of turkey
muscles. Muscles are made up of long bundled fibers, each
one housed in a tough protein sheath. As the meat heats, the
proteins that make up these sheaths will contract. Just like a
squeezing a tube of toothpaste, this causes juices to be
forced out of the bird. Heat the bird to much above 150°F or
so, and you end up with dry, stringy meat.
Salt helps mitigate this shrinkage by dissolving some of
the muscle proteins (mainly myosin). The muscle fibers
loosen up, allowing them to absorb more moisture and,
more important, they don’t contract as much when heated,
ensuring that more of that moisture stays in place as the
turkey cooks. Sounds great, right? But there’s a catch.
The Problems with Brining
There are two major problems with brining. First off, it’s a
major pain in the butt. Not only does it require that you have
a vessel big enough to submerge an entire turkey (common
options are a cooler, a big bucket, or a couple of layered
heavy-duty garbage bags tied together with hopes and
prayers against breakage), but it also requires that you keep
everything inside it—the turkey and the brine—cold for the
entire process. With an extra-large bird, this can be for as
long as a couple of days, meaning that you either give up
using the main compartment of your fridge at the time of
year that you most need it or you keep a constant supply of
ice packs or ice rotating around the bird to keep it cold.
Second, as Harold McGee once pointed out to me, brining
robs your bird of flavor. Think about it: The turkey is