Two years ago I put the family turkey in brine on the afternoon before Thanksgiving. After a 20-hour soak, it roasted up juicier and tastier than any turkey we'd ever had before. I was hooked from then on, and when I got my first wild turkey this weekend, there was never any question whether I'd brine it.
Hmm. I probably should have accounted for the weight difference between the 22-pound behemoth I made two years ago and the six-pounder I brought back from Rhinebeck. The latter bird probably didn't require a 24-hour pickling.
So yeah, my turkey came out a little salty. Still very tasty, though. And I am still a firm believer in brining; I just need to get a better feel for how long it takes. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Brining is a great way to infuse flavor and moisture where it is absent - for example, in your garden variety turkey breast. Commercial producers have been wise to this for years; lots of turkeys are injected with a salt-sugar solution. So is Armour's "Always Tender" brand of pork, from which the natural flavor, moisture, and tenderness has been bred out over the decades-long quest for yet another white meat: for every pound of "Always Tender" pork you buy, you're getting about an ounce and a half of brine.
The basic ratios of a brine can be adjusted to taste, but a general guideline is 1 pound of salt to a half pound of sugar to four gallons of water. It is very important to go by weights here, because the weight of granulated ingredients (like salt and sugar) depends entirely on the size of the grains (or, more accurately, the amount of empty space between the grains). Table salt grains are a little smaller than sugar crystals, so a pound of table salt takes up a bit less space than a pound of granulated white sugar (about 1/4 cup less). A pound of kosher salt, on the other hand, will take up about twice as much space as a pound of table salt. If you simply must go by volume, a cup of granulated sugar weighs about 0.4 pounds; you can figure out the rest.
A brine can - and should - be more than just salt and sugar, though; it's a vehicle to infuse the meat of the bird with flavor. Herbs, spices, and alcohols (with attendant acidity) are all typical. For my wild turkey, I went with flavors typically associated with game: cloves, juniper berries, allspice, sage, thyme, bay leaf, and peppercorns. I even added a splash of cider vinegar and bourbon. To make a brine, boil the salt, sugar, and spices in half the volume of water you'll need. Hold the remainder of the required volume of water aside in the form of ice water. Once the brine reaches a boil, simmer it for a few minutes, then take it off the heat and stir in the ice water. You MUST NOT put the bird in the brine until the latter is cold; if you do you're inviting a nasty food-borne illness to the table. If the ice water doesn't cool the brine enough, stick it in the fridge.
Before putting my wild turkey in the brine, I had to clean it. Even your most processed domestic turkey will have a few hairs in its nooks and crannies. With wild turkeys it's a little different, though. Wild turkeys have dark black feathers, and these feathers have a pigment in their roots. So even after I pulled the hairs out, there was often a little inky glob of goop trapped under the skin, which I had to extract using the zit-popping skills I developed as a teenager. Pretty gross the first time I did it, but after that it wasn't so bad.
So after a (too lengthy) soak in the brine, I took out my wild turkey and rinsed it thoroughly, inside and out. Dried it with a paper towel, brushed it all over with melted butter, and stuck it in the oven. High heat (450 degrees) for 20 minutes to crisp the skin, then low heat (325 degrees) to cook it through. The whole thing was done in just over an hour.
Incidentally, your turkey is done when it reaches the right temperature, not after a certain number of minutes per pound have elapsed. A meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh should read about 155 degrees. Carry-over cooking (the additional cooking that takes place due to latent heat after the food is removed from the oven) will bring the temperature to 160 degrees, at which point the turkey will be fully cooked but still tender and juicy. Breast meat cooks faster than leg meat, and does not need to be cooked to as high a temperature (155 degrees or so will do), so you may want to measure the temperature of the breast meat separately and cover it with aluminum foil for part of the cooking process. Some chefs even remove the breast and cook it separately, although this pretty much ruins the presentational impact of a huge bird on a platter. Pay no attention to the USDA; their 180-degree mandate is as certain to make your turkey taste like tree bark as it is to kill any disease-causing bacteria, and the chances of contracting a food-borne illness from a properly handled and prepared turkey cooked to 160 degrees is infinitesimal. If you don't have a meat thermometer, you can just poke the thickest part of the thigh with a skewer; the juices will still be faintly rosy when the turkey is ready.
I guess if I had to describe the flavor of wild turkey, I'd say it's basically the same as domestic turkey, just with more turkey-ness. That is, those qualities of flavor that distinguish turkey breast from chicken breast, and dark turkey meat from white turkey meat, are more prominent in a wild turkey. It's a gamey flavor with hints of wild herbs, wood, and straw. I don't know that it's really worth the extra money I paid for it. Certainly not after I loaded it with salt. The difference between my wild turkey and a properly prepared, good quality domestic turkey is really more one of degree than of kind, notwithstanding my diatribe of yesterday.
I just got back from the Federal Bar Council's annual Thanksgiving Lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria. The food was OK, but that's not what gets me. This was a full-service sit-down lunch for what had to be at least 2000 lawyers. It was in the Waldorf's Grand Ballroom. Dozens of waiters served three courses and coffee on the main floor and two levels of balconies all in under 90 minutes. It was astonishing. I can't imagine what it takes to run an operation like that, in the kitchen or in the dining room. That's professionalism. Mad props to the Waldorf.
That's right, the 2003 vintage of beaujolais nouveau was officially released yesterday. This is a wine event I can really get behind. Of course, it's hyped all out of proportion by 
Of course, the tradeoff for all this progress is flavor. The wild turkey that the Founding Fathers were familiar with looked and tasted nothing like the bloated beasts we carve up every November. Turkey is a game bird. It forages. It walks. It flies when it has to. It eats what it finds in the wild. A wild turkey looks nothing like the shoe-leather-covered protein balloons you see in most holiday photo spreads. Its breast, in comparison, looks downright sunken. Its legs are meaty and make up a larger proportion of its total weight. It is bonier, to be sure, almost as bony as a goose. And its meat, even the white meat, is darker, gamier, like a true game bird should be.
So I missed the fancy dinner in Boston. But I made good on my promise to eat grilled cheese for dinner. Canadian cheddar, Sicilian caciocavallo, and French port salut, on whole-grain bread, grilled with olive oil. A bowl of Campbell's Tomato Soup and a bottle of Tabasco on the side. And I ate it in my pajamas. Can't do that on the firm's tab.
There are three fruit sorbets on the menu: lemon, peach, and coconut. Because of my recent health kick, I opted for the peach sorbet over the tiramisu and ricotta cheesecake selected by my dining companions. As my lunchmates' rather uninterestingly plated desserts came out, I was presented with a frozen peach sitting upside-down on a plate, hollowed out and filled with a smooth, rich peach sorbet, a slice of the peach's bottom standing at attention in the midst of the frozen fruit puree. As I polished off my dessert, I saw a waiter returning a plate to the kitchen with a hollowed-out lemon on top of it. I can only imagine that there are sorbet-filled coconuts sitting in La Locanda's freezers; I wonder if they have little paper umbrellas sticking out of them.