Start by heating the water, salt, sugar, bouillon in a large stock pot until it all dissolves. Then put the herbs in your hands and rub your hands together to work up the flavor. Drop it into the hot brine and let it sit for around 5 minutes. Once you’ve got some flavor working from the herbs, throw your ice into the brine and let it cool so it doesn’t start cooking your turkey early. Once it’s cooled, submerge your turkey or turkey breast and let it sit. If it’s the breast I try to brine around 12-18 hours but like I mentioned, if you’re going with a full turkey, let it rest at least 24 hours but I’d shoot for 36.
To cook your turkey, rinse the brine off, pat dry and brush a little oil all over it and season it with some famous Grilla AP.
Set your Grilla to 375 and cook for an hour and a half or so (for turkey breast) or until the internal is 165. You can pull it around 5 degrees earlier to compensate for carryover heat.
Cranberry Sauce
Start by using real cranberries in a stock pot with around 1/3 c water. Get the water boiling then drop to simmer and let the cranberries cook down and start to pop. Once they start to soften add ¾ c of sugar for an 8-10 oz bag of real cranberries and mix well. Continue to simmer. Once the cranberries seem like they’re thickening you can cut the heat, smash the mixture well then finish with some vanilla. My wife can’t get enough of this stuff.
To finish, butter and toast your bread, stack your turkey and stuffing, top that with gravy and spread on some of that cranberry love then bask in the gloriousness of this monster.
And as always, make sure you take a picture of your creations and tag us in your dishes! We’d love to feature your work!
Make sure once your turkey is fully cooked to give it a nice rest. First off it’s not much fun burning yourself trying to slice this stuff but also it ensures all those delicious juices don’t run everywhere!
Now sure, you can stop here and just serve this beautiful dish as it is, orrrrr, you can create the gobbler with a few things you probably already have at home! Yeah, you could chef it up by making your own stuffing and gravy but if you’re like me and cooking for a lot of people this holiday season, make it easy on yourself and use the box stuff.
Mike Castaneda
