Holiday meals almost always include a roast, and there are some tips out there that are easy to implement that almost guarantee a great result. One of those tips applies to any roast: you can brine your roast, which is like marinating it but amplified significantly. The other tip is for poultry: butterfly your birds.
How to brine, science included:
Brining a roast or bird, meaning soaking it in a brine solution for 1-3 days before you cook it, is virtually guaranteed to result in a juicy, flavorful roast, as long as it isn't overcooked and is allowed to rest properly before cutting or carving. It's very simple to do, and here's why it works (nerd alert!): A brine solution is hypertonic as compared with the meat, meaning it contains more salt (electrolytes) than do the natural juices in the meat. One effect of this situation is that a piece of meat soaked in a hypertonic brine solution will absorb into its cells some of the brining solution. Given sufficient time, most if not all of the cells of the piece of meat will absorb some of the brine. Culinarily speaking, not only will this moderately salt your meat, but any other flavors dissolved in the brining solution will work their way literally inside of the meat you want to cook. Once there, much of that additional, tasty fluid will be retained during cooking, giving you a beautifully seasoned, very juicy piece of meat with many of the seasonings located directly inside of the meat.
In a less scientific nutshell, you can fill your roasts with a delicious, flavorful solution by brining if three conditions are met:
- The solution must be hypertonic (i.e. sufficiently salty) to cause the intracellular fluid exchange. For a turkey, for instance, this will require a couple or three cups of salt;
- The meat must sit in the hypertonic solution for a long enough period of time for this process to take place fully, usually 12-72 hours, during which time there is a small logistical issue: the entire mixture must be kept refrigerator-cold to prevent spoiling the meat!
- The solution should taste good, so it needs to be seasoned otherwise, to achieve maximum seasoning effect. If it tastes good (aside from being super-salty), then those flavors (aside from the super-saltiness) will come out in the finished roasted meat.
The process of brining meat, then, is straightforward: make a brine, put the meat in it, keep it cold, and leave it there for a day or two or three. When it's cold outside, as long as you have a clean, food-grade bucket, this isn't too hard to achieve. Brining can also take place in a large, tightly tied bag, and any kind of meat that you'd like to roast can be brined first for a great result.
For a great brine recipe for many meats, particularly for holiday flavored pork, poultry, and particularly turkey, click here!
How and why to butterfly a bird:
Butterflying a bird is essentially the process of taking out enough of its bones so that it will lay flat (and then using those bones in a stock, of course, to make soup or gravy!). In particular, the backbone must be removed, the neck bones should be removed, and frequently, the keel bone should be removed. For larger birds, this is a real job, except for the backbone and neck bones (which can be removed with some effort with a knife or butcher's shears). Because the breastbone is so hard to remove in a (large) turkey, it can be coaxed into laying flat once the backbone and neckbones are removed by placing it breast-side-up and pushing down hard on the breastbone. This will break the collarbones and several of the ribs, but with a little effort the bird will lay flat. It's a little gruesome and can be tough, but it's entirely worth it! I don't roast birds any other way now, as a matter of fact.
Why go through the hassle? Well, a butterflied bird will actually cook much more quickly than one that hasn't been butterflied. Besides the fact that you'll save time this way in the long-winded process of roasting a (large) bird, the quicker cooking time also helps you to retain more of the juices in the bird. A butterflied turkey is just about the juiciest turkey you can eat, and it only takes about half as long to roast as a "normal" turkey, pound for pound.
If you've brined and butterflied your bird, you should expect to be surprised by the amount of juice and tenderness that will result. It's incredible, sometimes being so juicy that when you cut it on your plate, juices run out onto it. It almost has to be tasted to be believed!
Get your ingredients and roasts locally! All of the ingredients for a simple brine are available widely in the Knoxville area at essentially any grocery store, but why not check out these fine sources of great meats to use in your brines: The Fresh Market and Earth Fare stores in Knoxville both have excellent meats, and for something extra special, consider looking at Laurel Creek Farms Pasture Raised Meats, which are top-notch and from the area, specifically from Sunbright, TN. They have a retail location on Washington and High Street in Maryville in conjunction with The Market and their website lists three area farmer's markets where they go to sell their meats, one in Knoxville, one in Maryville, and one in Oak Ridge.
For more great recipes and cooking ideas, follow the Knoxville Gourmet Food Examiner by subcribing at the top of the page. You can also read more on his personal cooking blog: The Untrained Gourmet.
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