Jeremey's Weblog

Best. Turkey. Ever.

This year's Thanksgiving turkey was the best ever, and also the easiest, so I thought I'd share. It's basically Alton Brown's recipe with some minor variation in brine ingredients. First, go get yourself a remote thermometer... I think ours was 18 bucks at Target (it's a meat thermometer with a cord and a remote control).

The key here is the brine... you're going to get far more flavor into the bird by soaking it in brine for 16 hours than you ever will by doing all kinds of hijinks in the oven. So, the brine recipe:

• 1 gallon vegetable stock, garlic-free if possible (I used Imagine organic veg stock)
• 1 cup kosher salt
• 1.5 cups brown sugar (I used light)
• large handful black/mixed peppercorns
• small handful smoked peppercorns
• small handful whole cloves
• fresh sage (leaves from several stalks)
• fresh thyme (a small bunch)
• fresh rosemary (a small bunch)
• 1+ gallon ice water (I emphasized ice)

AB also recommends allspice berries, Whole Foods didn't have them.

Heat the stock on the stove until it's hot (no need to boil it), add the salt and sugar, get it dissolved. Turn off the heat and add everything else except the ice water. Cool to room temperature.

Get your fresh or thoroughly thawed turkey out of the fridge and remove giblets, neck, and tail (don't cut anything, just remove whatever "extras" are in your bird). Stash that stuff in the fridge. Regarding thawing, if you're going to thaw in a fridge, allow 5 days.

Put the brine solution into a 10 gallon drink cooler (the orange work coolers you see around, they're tall and sorta skinny). Put a little of the ice water in. Put the turkey in, breast side down. Cover with ice water so the turkey is submerged, but you don't need more than that. I stirred the brine around at this point. Stash outside (or somewhere cool/cold) for 16 hours.

After 16 hours, preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Remove the turkey from the brine, drain. Truss the turkey well (this is really important for even cooking, actually). If you don't know how, watch AB do it.

Lightly coat in a high-temperature oil like safflower or canola (I used safflower); this will help it brown nicely. Grind salt and pepper onto the skin (to flavor the skin itself, which will get nice and crispy and yummy). Put the turkey on a rack in a roasting pan (or I suppose w/o a rack is fine).

Here comes the one "trick"... we're going to use the thermometer so we can take the turkey out at precisely the right doneness. Any other way, it's all guesswork. Read your thermometer instructions, some of them can't be in the oven at 500 degrees (like mine). So I did the 500 degree section and 30 minutes of 350 degrees w/o the thermometer and then stuck it in at that point. YMMV. Whenever you do insert the probe from the thermometer, insert it into the breast from the top, maybe 2/3 of the way toward the rear, so that the end of the probe is in the thickest part of the meat and not touching bone.

So, either with thermometer now, or with the plan to add it later, stick the turkey in your 500 degree oven for 20-30 minutes. There was so much sizzle I only let it go 20. After the stint at 500, turn the oven down to 350. If your thermometer isn't in yet, give it 30 minutes and then insert the thermometer. AB recommends setting the target temp on the remote to 151. I did 155, and out of the oven my turkey cruised to 170, so 151 is probably perfect (the final target being 165).

When the alarm goes off (make sure you turn it on!), remove the turkey, cover loosely with foil. DO NOT REMOVE THE THERMOMETER YET. Let it rest a good long time before carving (30 minutes minimum, more is fine). My turkey left the oven at 3pm and we ate at 5:30. Remove the thermometer when you go to carve.

A carving tip that really worked for me: cut the whole breast off in one chunk, and then cut slices across it (i.e. slice perpendicular to the length). That way you cut across the grain and the slices are much less tough. You can even cut them pretty thick if you like.

With this recipe, and really controlling them temperature, everything was fantastic. The white meat was succulent, the dark meat was done, the skin was crispy and delicious.

So:

• Brine
  
• Truss
  
• Control/monitor temperature
  
• Rest it
  

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recipe, turkey, thanksgiving

Five Characteristics of Good Coffee

Jim Hughes "tagged" me in this post to blog about 5 characteristics of good coffee. I (like he) generally don't do these blog tag game things, but this one I can write about. But I may not pass the tag along.

I think I will focus on the process of making good coffee, instead of the characteristics of the finished product, as I think that will be more useful, but also the final product is so complex (hundreds of unique flavor compounds) that it would be difficult to describe. So, what follows are five characteristics of the process of making great coffee.

1 - Beans. Great coffee starts with great beans. There are many variables that factor into great beans, but I will focus on two: source and roast. A roaster must decide how to choose the beans to roast, and how to obtain them. Roasters that build direct relationships with farms that are aiming to produce a high quality product (generally called "specialty coffee") tend to also be the ones with the most care and knowledge of coffee and the coffee industry, and thus they tend to be the best roasters. If the roaster doesn't know why he is carrying/roasting a specific bean, move along. Second, the roast itself... this is critical, as coffee is useless without being roasted. The roast is an alchemic transformation of a green bean into a little package of potential flavor (think potential energy). The flavors in coffee come from the oils in the beans, developed in the roast. If you see those oils all over the surface of your beans, well they're not in the beans anymore, are they?

How do you pick a good roaster? Find one that is passionate about coffee and its potential flavors and complexity, that sources his beans directly from farms or at least goes and experiences these farms and builds relationships with the farmers, that knows why he has chosen a particular bean and how he roasted it, and that won't sell you a particular bean in more than one roast (good roasters generally feel that there is a "right roast" for each bean).

2 - Freshness. Coffee should be consumed within two weeks of the day it is roasted, in most cases. So buy from good local roasters, buy a little (e.g. 1 pound), and buy it often. Even more important - it should be ground immediately before use. Grinding should be the last step prior to combining the ground coffee with water. Coffee contains many volatile compounds which distribute flavor into brewing coffee, and one of the more important is CO2 (carbon dioxide). Roasted coffee loses much of its CO2 within the first two weeks post-roast, and once it is ground, it loses the vast majority of whatever CO2 it had within 60 seconds. So prepare your brewing system, prepare your water, then grind and brew.

3 - Grind. Coffee (the drink) is not made from whole beans, it's made with ground coffee. Coffee beans must be ground to the appropriate fineness for the type of brewing you are doing, and this will require some experimentation (generally, coarse for French press, finer for drip). Also, as mentioned above, you really want to grind as the last step before brewing. To grind with any consistency, you really need a burr grinder. Blade grinders just pulverize the same coffee particles over and over, so you get a very uneven grind.

Why does this matter? Because brewing coffee is really about extracting the flavors and oils from the ground beans. If you have an uneven grind, you will have "dust" bits along with some larger chunks... the larger chunks won't get completely extracted, and the dust bits will get massively overextracted. Overextraction means bitterness. This is why a lot of coffee is bitter (among many factors).

4 - Quantity and Time. You need to use the right amount of coffee for your brewing method, and unless you've spent some time working on your coffee, you're probably not using enough. Again, the problem is overextraction... if you stick a teaspoon of ground coffee in a 12-cup French press, you will overextract that coffee and end up with bitter (and probably "weak") coffee. Real coffee geeks speak in grams, but if you develop a fair approximation by volume, that's fine. Start somewhere in the vicinity of two tablespoons of grounds per 6-8oz of water, and go from there. Experiment. Your grind will be a factor here too, because a finer grind will extract more quickly.

Brewing time (in methods where you control this, e.g. French press) is also a major factor. This will require some experimentation, but generally 3-4 minutes is the right ballpark, if the other variables are in line.

5 - Water and Temperature. Use good water. Filtered water, spring water, whatever... just use good water. Then, use that water at the right temperature (in brewing methods where you control this). Boiling is too hot! You want to be around 200 degrees. Find a reliable, consistent way to control your water temperature.

Finally, I leave you with a characteristic that is NOT a characteristic of good coffee: bitter. Good coffee is many things, but bitter should not be a prominent one. Bitterness generally results from poor extraction (too hot, too long, too little coffee, poor grind).

Make some good coffee! FWIW, a French press and a Solis Maestro Plus grinder will get you on your way. Spend your money on the grinder, buy a cheap French press. Expensive drip brewers won't make good coffee unless every variable is right. Control the variables yourself.

Technorati Tags:
coffee, tagged

Alan Wayne Blankenship: 1970-2008

How do I start? My friend is gone. We weren't so close over the last couple years, but there were years where our families did a lot of life together. We got married, we had babies, we spent time. I developed a deep love for Alan and his family that has never abated.

I was shocked to hear he'd fallen from a malfunctioning ladder and landed on concrete last Thursday, and of course was very concerned. But on Saturday another friend posted on Facebook that he was at the hospital saying goodbye, and that they were going to pull life support, and then it really hit me hard. It hadn't been clear how grave the situation was, and suddenly we had to go.

So we went to the hospital and were graciously welcomed by the family, and I got to say goodbye to my friend. Seeing him made it much more real and personal, but I'm so glad we went. He died two minutes after they removed the respirator.

Alan was a good man. He was someone you could depend on, someone who did things right. It turns out the previous owners of our house hired Alan to do their roof, not too long before we bought it. When Hurricane Rita was threatening, I called Alan for an estimate of what kind of wind speed the roof could handle, and we stayed put based on that. Rita didn't hit us, but Ike did, and not one shingle left our roof.

I probably laughed more with and around Alan in the last 10 years than anyone else. He had a knack for laughing at himself and situations that was disarming and genuine without being (too) silly.

Alan was a thinker and a wrestler and a struggler. He wrestled with big ideas, from politics to theology to faith, and we spent many an hour discussing and debating over the years. I am confident that his struggle is over and he has found his peace.

He loved his family and his kids, and it is for them that I am deeply grieved. I feel an overwhelming deep knot in my gut, an intense heaviness. I have imagined the same situation in our family, my kids losing one of us, and I can't begin to even think about it.

Alan, we will see you again soon, my friend. But not yet.