How to Cook a Moist Turkey - who knew?

We seem to actually serve pams-hams less than you'd think because we always end up giving ours away at the last minute. This year was no exception so we thawed the frozen turkey (gift) that was in our freezer and gave it a try. The turkey ended up excellent - the best we've ever cooked. Since I've always been militant about checking the temperature often, we all attributed this new moister turkey to the overnight marinading.

Now why they call marinading "brining" when it's a turkey is a mystery to me. But whatever you call it, it works! I've been told the salt in the brine is the key to the moist tender turkey. I was afraid it would make the turkey taste salty but I can assure you, it didn't. Here's what we used:

1 1/2 cups salt

1/2 cup brown sugar

couple of shakes of parsley

water to cover the turkey

Since the salt and sugar need to dissolve, the mixture then needs to be boiled. If you have enough storage and a big enough pot, you can just submerge the turkey right into the liquid and refrigerate overnight. (I would NOT recommend what I did which was to try to transfer it into a large ziploc freezer bag which was way too difficult to hold so we ended up with some spillage.) Eventually we used a cooler that was just slightly larger than the turkey and poured the liquid into the cooler.

Next time you're trying to cook a moist turkey, give this a try and let us know how it worked out for you. I'm actually going to eat the leftovers for a change!