Brining the Turkey

Here you have it—my brining technique—the easiest way to inject as much moisture and flavour into a turkey.

Brining sounds more anxiety-ridden than it really is. In essence what you are doing is immersing the bird in a salt-water bath with a few aromatics. The aromatics can be any combination of herbs and spices that you fancy—see the slideshow below for my curated selection.

My secret ingredient is buttermilk—the staple of a lot of southern fried chicken recipes. I use just a little water to steep the aromatics and dissolve the salt, then substitute the rest of the water with tangy buttermilk. The result is to be tasted to believed.

These are the important proportions to remember:
Salt: 1/4 cup Salt for every 5 lbs of turkey
Buttermilk: 9 oz. Buttermilk for every pound of turkey
Herbs: 1/4 cup of Assorted Herbs for every 5 lbs of turkey
Spices: 2 tbsp of assorted whole spices for every 5 lbs of turkey

If you have a pre-brined turkey, you can still use my recipe to impart maximum flavour. Just skip the salt all together.



[Click here to see the images in a larger size.]

Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Rosemary and Pine nuts

Here is another quick roasted side dish recipe that is the same simple technique as my roasted brussels sprouts, eggplant and root vegetables. Like all those recipes, this is very easy to tweak and update with different aromatics—I came up with the garlic and rosemary combination at the spur-of-the-moment for Christmas dinner last week and refined it further tonight by adding the musky crunch of toasted pine nuts.

Ingredients 

¼ cup Pine nuts
3 lbs [1½ kg] Sweet Potatoes (peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes)
4 cloves Garlic (finely minced)
Sea Salt (to taste)
1 tsp freshly ground Black Pepper
1½ tbsp fresh Rosemary (finely chopped)
4 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1. In a large skillet or frying pan, toast pine nuts over medium heat until lightly golden. Remove to a bowl and set aside.
2. Pre-heat oven to 450º F (230ºC).
3. Put sweet potatoes on a large baking sheet. Sprinkle with garlic, sea salt, black pepper and rosemary, drizzle with olive oil, and using your hands, toss well to mix.
4. Roast in the oven for 30 mins, then stir the sweet potatoes with a large spoon to ensure that they caramelise evenly. Continue roasting for another 15 mins.
5. Remove sweet potatoes from oven, add pine nuts and toss gently. Sserve immediately.