Twice Baked Turkey in a Citrusy Apple Cider Brine

You know that daylight savings time happened this past weekend, right?  Yea, I know too, but my body has yet to adjust to this one hour change.  That, and the added stress of my elderly mother’s declining health have led to yet another experiment gone awry.

Twice Baked Turkey is a misadventure – a total mess.  So, while this is “filed” under “recipes” on this blog, I’m not suggesting you repeat my crazy plan for brining and roasting your turkey this holiday season.  But, let me back-up a moment and give you the back story:

I have an extra freezer in my garage.  And, this extra freezer has gotten totally out of hand.  A few months ago (yes, months!), I decided we (Charlie and I) needed to eat what was in this freezer and try not to buy more food to put in it until we’ve used up the food languishing there!  This included a 14 1/2 pound turkey that has been in residence since last Thanksgiving.

That’s right – I’m admitting to a shameless secret – I’ve had a turkey in my freezer for almost a year!

I love turkey and it’s never cheaper than at Thanksgiving and I rationalize to myself that I’ll want more turkey sometime after Thanksgiving.  So, why not buy 2 or 3?

I don’t remember whether I bought 2 or 3 last year, but I think I bought 3.  One to make pre-Thanksgiving so that I’d have lots and lots of gravy and leftovers, one to make for Thanksgiving and one for later in the new year.

Well, although I wish time would stand still, it didn’t and now almost a year later, there was this turkey taking up space in my freezer.  Since I want to buy a new turkey when they go on sale in the next few weeks, I thought I’d better defrost that old bird and cook it.  So, last week, I took it out of the freezer and put it in my garage refrigerator (I have one of those, too) and let it defrost for 4 or 5 days.

So, while it was safely defrosting in the refrigerator, I started scouring my cookbook collection to try a new way to cook turkey.  I already have two roasted turkey recipes on this blog:  Foil-wrapped Roasted Turkey and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme Roasted Turkey.  But, what’s better than having 2 roasted turkey recipes on a blog?  Why 3 or 10 or 20, right?

On a mission to try something new, I found a brine recipe in a cooking magazine (2013 Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publication Holiday Recipes) from last year that sounded promising.  Chock full of amazing recipes and great cooking tips, I knew I couldn’t fail.  Plus, I’ve never brined anything, much less a turkey, before so this would be something new to try!

Armed with my new knowledge, I set about determining if I could, indeed, brine a turkey. The recipe said to place a 14 to 16 pound turkey in a 16 quart stock pot with the brine. Well, I had an 8 quart stockpot and a 20 quart stock pot; nothing in between.  So, I reasoned on the side of caution and decided it was wise to use the 20 quart stock pot.

But, and this is a big but, would it fit in the refrigerator?

Yardstick in hand, I measured the height of the stockpot with the lid and the space between shelves in my garage refrigerator.  Yes, I could do this!

Next, I checked the ingredients in the recipe to see if I had everything on hand:

• Bay leaves – check
• Apple cider – check
• Salt – check
• Brown sugar – check
• Sliced oranges – check
• Bay leaves – check
• Crystallized ginger – check (yep; I even had that in the pantry!)
• Whole black peppercorns – check
• Whole allspice – check

Surprisingly, I did!  This recipe, called “Fruited Turkey Brine”, included 2 oranges.  Well, why not change it up a bit and make it with an orange, lemon and a lime?  Check, check!

I hoisted the 20 quart stockpot up onto my stove top and added the ingredients. They smelled amazing!  The citrus with the smell of ginger and allspice wafting as this brew started to simmer – liquid gold!  Once steaming, I removed it from the heat and added 12 cups of ice to cool it down.  The recipe says NOT to put your turkey in the brine unless the brine is completely cooled.  In spite of adding 12 cups of ice, the brine was not cool to the touch for another hour and a half.

My “schedule” now completely out the window, I knew I would be cooking this turkey the next day!  So, in the meantime, I prepared the buttery rub.  Finally, the brine was ready. After removing the turkey from its wrappings, removing its innnards, I rinsed it, then I lowered it carefully into the ginormous pot.  Success!  Whew!  There was plenty of room in the 20 quart pot for this turkey.  And, even though the brine now covered the turkey, it did not overflow.

But, the tail end of the turkey was floating up through the brine.  The instructions said “weight down turkey with several plates.”  Well, instead, I used a pasta bowl that fit inside the pot perfectly and filled it with rocks!  Not ordinary rocks, but those tumbled rocks with smooth edges that you use in floral arranging.

Now good-to-go and ready to transfer this pot to the refrigerator for its 12 hour layover, I lifted it.  Ugh!  That sucker was heavy!  What was I thinking?  20 quart steel stockpot plus 32 cups of liquid plus 14 1/2 pound turkey plus bowl full of rocks = too heavy for me to carry alone!  Now what to do?

Charlie to the rescue with his scooter!  Charlie, my husband, is handicapped and uses a motorized scooter full-time.  And, that’s what was needed to move this pot of briney goodness to the garage refrigerator.  If you don’t have a motorized scooter handy, suggest you make sure that you have a man (husband, friend, son or lover) nearby to help you! {grin}

Once out in the garage, I realized that the weight of this brining turkey would surely crack the glass shelf in my refrigerator or even break it and I had visions of it crashing to the ground sending my turkey flying across the dirty garage floor!  Not wanting to repeat a turkey disaster (once, while lifting a turkey out of the oven, I sloshed some of the turkey juice on the floor, stepped in it, slipped and came crashing to the ground with the turkey flying across the room!), I took the bottom shelf and fruit and vegetable bins out of my refrigerator and hoisted the pot onto the bottom “floor” of the refrigerator.

Finally, I could relax a bit because nothing more would happen to this turkey until the next day.

The next morning, mentally prepared to get this turkey roasting, Charlie helped me bring it in from the garage refrigerator.  Using clean hands, I lifted it out of the brine, patted it dry with a paper towel, placed it carefully in my turkey roasting pan, stuffed it with quartered apples, onions, carrots, celery, a whole bulb of garlic (cut in half), twigs of rosemary and thyme then slathered it with an herb butter rub.  And, I turned on the oven to preheat.

Then, life interfered.  My mother has been ill for several days.  During the month of October, she’d been hospitalized 3 times.  Back at her assisted living facility since the end of October, she’s continued to decline.  Over several days time, I’d called multiple sources asking for guidance on getting my mother the additional care she needs as she recovers.

So, now the phone was ringing!  I hang up from one call and get another.  The preheated oven and the turkey could wait.  Finally, a few minutes to breathe and I got the turkey in the oven and covered it with foil.  Looking at the clock, I thought I calculated the 3 and a half hours cooking time needed, set my timer and left to handle the unfolding situation.

When the timer rang, I took the foil off and reset the timer.

When the timer rang again, I inserted an instant read thermometer into the turkey’s leg – 175 degrees F; perfect!  I carefully lifted it out of the oven, transferred it to the cutting board, tented it with foil to rest, set the timer again and went back to fielding phone calls.

I then set up my table for a photo shoot and took the foil off the turkey – not a pretty sight!

With a black spot the size of your fist, this otherwise lightly browned turkey was too pale on its extremities!  Not having a kitchen blow torch handy, or a glaze to make my turkey “photo shoot pretty”, I turned the turkey this way and that!

Turning it this way only showcases the dry, skinless area of the breast, making it look like a mangled mess!

This shot, although decent because of the natural lighting, only highlights the uneven browning all over this pathetic bird!

And, with this one, I gave up completely!  Not to be outwitted by an unevenly browned turkey, I decided I’d slice it and place it on a platter and photograph it that way.  Then, I’d share the recipe for the brine and the roasted turkey as two separate posts for this blog.

So, back to the kitchen counter, I sliced through one of the turkey legs in order to tear it from the carcass.  Imagine my horror when the turkey leg oozed red blood and the meat a decided deep pink!  OMG!  It wasn’t done!  Not only was it not done, but Charlie was hovering around waiting for a turkey sandwich {grin}!  It was noon after all, and the house smelled like Thanksgiving…

Have you ever tried to carve a turkey that’s not done?  It isn’t easy.  In fact, it’s near impossible {grin}.  As I wrestled with this turkey, it was quite clear I had a decision to make. No “pretty” slices for a second photo shoot!  I stabbed and carved and ripped that turkey to shreds – a cathartic release of the pent up emotions welling inside me as the overwhelming reality of my mother’s illness took hold.

The breast was almost cooked.  I put all the other mangled pieces in a 9 inch x 13 inch baking pan, covered it with foil, placed it back in the oven for another hour.  I sliced the breast, microwaved it to smithereens and made us each a turkey sandwich.

Charlie, a very wise man, said as we were chewing our turkey sandwich like a cow chews cud, “that was a lot of work for a lackluster turkey”.  Yep, I will tell you that I won’t brine a turkey again.  Too much effort.  Of course the fact that I apparently miscalculated the time (was it because of daylight savings time?  Or, the stress of not being able to do more for my mother?), and used a year-old frozen turkey had nothing to do with this catastrophic failure!

Cooking is a stress reliever for me.  I cooked this turkey on Monday (made the brine on Sunday).  On Sunday, I also made a Spanish Rice and Chicken Casserole with Black Beans. On Tuesday, I woke up at 6:00 a.m. ready to conquer the world.  Instead, I went into my kitchen and made a batch of Lemon Garlic Chicken with Rosemary, a batch of Chicken in Mushroom Brandy Cream, Turkey Gravy, and a batch of Taco Meat.  Don’t look for these recipes on my blog, because they aren’t here (yet).

I just had to unwind and take my mind off my mom and the fact that she is failing.  In my way of coping, I was making the food for her.  She loves chicken and turkey.  I wanted to feed her (she’s not eating).  But, I couldn’t…I could only feed my soul by concentrating on the cooking at hand and creating lots of dinners for future meals (some are in the freezer, some in the refrigerator; my brother arrives from New York tomorrow and I have enough to feed a small army for several days).

If you are still reading this post, I’m sure you didn’t click on it and expect it to go this way. I’ve talked very little about my mother, of late, so for regular readers, this will come as a surprise.  My sweet, dear, wonderful mother has so many things wrong with her (heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease) that she may have crossed a road with no turning back.  And, even though she is 84 and I’m almost 60, I’m not ready to lose her.  Are you ever ready?

I’m not sure I’ll be able to post with any consistency for the next few days or even the next few weeks.  And, when I do, they will be mostly recipes because I have a back log of recipes that are photographed; I just have to download them into a post and write the post.

In the meantime, please say a prayer for my mother.  To know her is to love her – she’s just that way.  Kind, loving, generous, with a sweet disposition and a lovely smile that lights up a room.  And, if she’d been in the kitchen with me, working on this turkey project, she would have said, “don’t worry about it, Carole; it will be fine.”  The same thing she tells me every time I visit her – “don’t worry; I’m fine” and “don’t worry; it will be fine.”

It’s not fine.  She’s not fine…

Here’s the recipe for the brine:

 

Print

 

Until Next Time,

 

Related Posts:

(other experiments gone array)

• Brown Sugar Pineapple Ham: a Cautionary Tale of a Pinterest Failure
• The Casa Bella Swedish Pancake Factory
• Cake Batter Fudge Bars
• Cake Batter Triple-Chocolate Caramel Bars
• Strawberry Cake
• The Leprechaun Cake Wreck Caper
• Of Messes in Pots
• Pumpkin Patch Pals Pumpkin Pie
• Bacon Wrapped Meatloaf Ring
• Scaredy Cat Pie Crust Cookies