Brining is a popular technique to make turkey moist and flavorful for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. However, it can be easy to over-brine your bird, resulting in an unpleasantly salty taste. Don’t panic if you pulled your turkey from the brine only to find it’s far too salty. There are several effective ways to desalinate an over-brined turkey and salvage your holiday meal.
How Brining Works
Brining involves soaking raw turkey in a saltwater solution before roasting to enhance juiciness and tenderness. Typically, a brine is made by dissolving 1 cup salt per gallon of water along with aromatics like brown sugar, herbs, and spices. The turkey then soaks for 12-24 hours under refrigeration.
As the turkey sits in the salty brine the salt dissolves muscle proteins which allows the meat to retain more moisture during cooking. However all that absorbed salt needs to go somewhere – directly into the turkey meat. Too long in an overly concentrated brine can ruin your turkey’s flavor.
Signs of an Overly Salty Bird
- Very salty and unpleasant drippings for gravy
- Salty aroma and taste in white and dark meat
- Extreme thirst after eating the turkey
- Mushy, spongy texture from over-absorbing brine
Before roasting the whole turkey, taste a small piece of meat. It’s much easier to remedy over-brining before the bird is cooked.
4 Simple Fixes for Desalting Turkey
Don’t lose hope if your taste test confirms the turkey is far too salty. Use these effective tricks to rescue an over-brined turkey:
1. Rinse Thoroughly After Brining
Give the raw turkey a good rinse under cold tap water to remove excess salt from the skin and cavity. Make sure water also runs inside the cavity and neck area to flush out the salty brine.
2. Soak in Fresh Cold Water
After rinsing, submerge the turkey in a sink or pot filled with fresh cold water for 15-30 minutes. This helps draw out absorbed salt from the meat.
3. Use Low-Sodium Chicken Broth for Gravy
When making gravy, be sure to start with low-sodium or no-salt added chicken broth This prevents intensifying saltiness.
4. Thin Salty Gravy with Cornstarch Slurry
If the gravy itself tastes too salty, simply whisk in a cornstarch slurry to dilute and reduce saltiness. A slurry is equal parts cornstarch and cold water.
Preventing Over-Brining Next Time
Learn from any brining mistakes this holiday season. Here are tips for properly brining turkey to avoid excess saltiness:
- Use 1 cup salt per 1 gallon water brine ratio
- Reduce brining time to 12-18 hours for large birds
- Avoid brining frozen turkeys marked “injected with sodium solution”
- Rinse and soak turkey after removing from brine
- Start gravy with low-sodium chicken broth
With some quick troubleshooting, you can still rescue an over-brined turkey and make delicious gravy. Let this be a lesson for properly brining your Thanksgiving bird next time. Just be grateful for the learning experience!
Frequently Asked Questions About Brined Turkey Being Too Salty
How does brining make turkey salty?
Brining allows turkey to absorb saltwater, infusing the meat with salt flavor. All that absorbed salt from the brine has to go somewhere – directly into the turkey meat.
Can you over-brine turkey?
Yes, brining for too long or in a very salty brine can make turkey inedibly salty with a spongy texture. 18 hours max is recommended even for large birds.
What if I used too much salt in the brine?
Accidentally making a very salty brine can be fixed by diluting with more water or decreasing brine time significantly. It’s easy to overdo salt in a brine.
Do I rinse turkey after brining?
Yes, you’ll need to carefully rinse the turkey (inside and out!) to remove some of the saltiness from the brine. I actually like to soak mine in cold water for about 15 minutes.
Can brined turkey be too salty to eat?
Unfortunately yes, brining for too long or in a very concentrated salt solution can make the turkey far too salty and unpleasant to eat. Luckily there are ways to desalinate an over-brined bird.
How can I reduce saltiness after brining?
Rinsing, soaking in fresh water, using low-sodium broth, and thinning gravy with a cornstarch slurry are simple ways to desalinate turkey meat and gravy if you’ve over-brined.
What’s the best way to keep brined turkey from being too salty?
Using the right brine ratio of 1 cup salt per 1 gallon of water and brining for no longer than 18 hours will prevent turkey from becoming unpleasantly salty. Rinsing and soaking after brining helps too.
Can I save turkey that is too salty from brining?
Yes! With a good rinse, fresh water soak, low-sodium gravy techniques, and cornstarch slurry to thin gravy, you can rescue an over-brined salty turkey and still have a great holiday meal.
Is it possible to brine a turkey without making it salty?
Unfortunately brining does inherently make turkey more salty since it is absorbing a saltwater solution. However, using the proper salt-to-water ratio in the brine and not over-brining will minimize saltiness.
Following a few simple desalination tips can mean the difference between having to order pizza on Thanksgiving or being able to serve a properly brined, juicy turkey with perfect gravy. Let your over-salted bird be a lesson in brining carefully next time. With some strategic troubleshooting, you can still save your holiday centerpiece.
How Brining Works
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, lets do a quick recap on brining basics. The basic step is to soak meat overnight in a tub full of very salty water. The meat should be lean, like turkey, chicken, or pork chops. Most brines are in the range of 5 to 8% salt to water by weight. Over the course of the night, the meat absorbs some of that water. More importantly, that water stays put even after the meat is cooked. By brining meat, you can decrease the amount of total moisture loss by 30 to 40%.
To show this, I cooked three turkey breasts that were all the same in an oven set to 300°F (150°C) until the insides were 145°F (63°C). One was brined, the other was soaked overnight in plain water, and the last was left alone. All three breasts came from non-kosher, non-enhanced birds (i. e. , the birds were natural, having received no treatment after slaughter). I charted their weight straight from the package, after brining, and after cooking.
Before being roasted, both the bird soaked in brine and the bird soaked in water gained a lot of weight. However, the watered bird lost almost all of that weight as it cooked, while the brined bird kept a lot more. This corresponded to a juicier texture on eating. So whats going on here?.
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Some newspapers say it’s all because of osmosis, which is the movement of water across a membrane from a place with few solutes to a place with many. Water moves from the brining vessel, where there are few solutes, to the cells of the turkey, where there are many proteins, minerals, and other fun biological things dissolved in the water.
This theory is, in fact, inaccurate. If that were true, then soaking a turkey in clean, salt-free water would work better than soaking it in brine, but we already know that’s not the case. According to the osmosis theory, if you soak a turkey in a ridiculously concentrated brine (I tested the turkey in a 3% salt solution), it should dry out even more.
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However, I discovered that a highly concentrated 3% salt solution wasn’t any better at keeping the turkey moist than a more moderate 6% salt solution, which proves that the osmosis theory is completely false.
To understand whats really happening, you have to look at the structure of turkey muscles. Muscles are made up of long, bundled fibers, each one housed in a tough protein sheath. As the turkey heats, the proteins that make up this sheath will contract. This makes the juices come out of the bird, just like when you squeeze a tube of toothpaste. Heat them to much above 150°F (66°C) or so, and you end up with dry, stringy meat.
Salt helps mitigate this shrinkage by dissolving some of the muscle proteins (mainly myosin). The muscle fibers loosen up, which lets them soak up more water. What’s more, they don’t contract as much when they cook, which keeps more of that water in the turkey while it cooks.
Sounds great, right? But theres a catch.
The Problems With Brining
There are two major problems with brining. First off, its a major pain in the butt. A cooler, a big bucket, or a couple of layers of heavy-duty garbage bags tied together with hopes that they won’t break are all common options for a vessel big enough to submerge a whole turkey. During the whole process, you must keep the turkey and the brine cold inside the vessel. For an extra-large bird, this could take a couple of days. This means that you either can’t use the main part of your fridge at the time of year when you want to, or you have to keep ice packs or rotating ice on hand to keep the bird cool.
“brining robs your bird of flavor”
Second, brining robs your bird of flavor. Think about it: Your turkey is absorbing water, and holding on to it. That means that the extra 20%20savings%20in%20moisture%20loss%20doesn’t really come from turkey juice; it’s just tap water. Many folks who eat brined birds have that very complaint: Its juicy, but the juice is watery.
There have been a lot of suggestions for how to solve this problem, so I chose to put them all to the test side by side.