Years ago we were at Maria’s for Thanksgiving. Anyone who has experienced our family gatherings in recent years knows the chaos that ensues whenever we try to prepare a meal at holiday time. Before my mother passed away I don’t think any of us gave one thought to the meal preparation. We were only looking forward to how good it would taste once my mom had prepared EVERYTHING. Now (I speak as if I am still around for them…how I wish I was) I think we revel in being together and a tasty meal is just a bonus.
Well, that particular Thanksgiving, Joaquim, a good family friend from Portugal was visiting. Joaquim is a cook, a very good cook. So the night before Thanksgiving when he suggested we brine the turkey, we all let this Portuguese man who had never celebrated Thanksgiving, take over cooking our bird.
The first thing he did was get a cooler and placed the turkey inside. Then he covered it in milk. Yes, milk. He followed this up with some whiskey (of course, it’s Joaquim cooking) and sliced oranges. I couldn’t remember anything else. But we all went to sleep thinking we were going to die of some sort of food poisoning the next day. But let me tell you something, that turkey was delicious. Even my husband who is not a fan of turkey had three pieces of what he referred to as the moistest turkey he had ever had.
So last year when we offered to cook a turkey for an American Thanksgiving in Sydney we called Joaquim and got his brine recipe. Our turkey went over very well. We then made it again at Christmas and most recently at Easter. Since each time it was met with positive reviews, I thought I’d share it.
Joaquim’s Brine Recipe
- 5 liters of milk
- 1 liter of white wine
- 250 ml of whiskey
- water (to cover the bird)
- 2-4 onions sliced
- 100 g of garlic
- lots of sliced lemon & oranges
- 4-6 bay leaves
- a bunch of parsley
- salt
After placing the bird in a container big enough to hold it (you can see below what we used), add all the ingredients listed above. Since it is summer when we celebrate Thanksgiving & Christmas, we had to put the container in the fridge. However, when we were at Maria’s, we just covered the cooler and placed it outside. Luckily no bears broke into it.
In the morning we drained the bird and dried it with a paper towel and rested it in the roasting pan. I then covered the turkey in bacon. We baked it according to the suggested time at Butterball. And voila, a lovely turkey.
*Note ~ Some sites suggest that it will not work to brine a pre-frozen bird, but our was frozen and it still resulted in a very moist turkey.
