Cook's Illustrated agrees. Their recommendation for simplicty's sake is to buy a Kosher bird. No need to spend a night brining. The only downside is that you don't get to ramp up the flavors in the brine, since it has been done for you. Other than that, the Kosher bird was a winner.

What's with all this brine? I just put some butter and salt under the skin before roasting and it comes out beautifully. Sounds like a recipe for dynastic heart problems using all that salt.

I'm going to get my Christmas turkey from my local butcher, because he is a class act.

Not so. The salt is in the brine to initiate osmosis. The meat will attempt to reach a state of equilibrium between the exterior juice with a higher salt concentration and the inner juices with less salt. The exterior liquid will be drawn into the flesh of the bird carrying with it water, which makes the bird juicy; salt, which intensifies flavor; and the other seasonings that you have added to the brine. Salt is the key ingredient to open the door of the cells' semi-permeable membrane. But the real goal is to infuse the bird with juice and seasoning. The final product will have far more flavor then an unbrined bird, but certainly isn't going to taste "salty". You're not making jerky afterall.

Rubbing the flesh with butter and salt before cooking is OK, but the seasoning doesn't penetrate very far into the bird. Maybe a quarter inch at best. The interior of the breast sees no benefit whatsoever from a pre-cook rubdown. Also, the equilibrium effect of the pre-cook rub can work against you as salt (without liquid) on the exterior of meat will cause moisture from the inside of the bird to be extracted in order to form an equilibrious state of saline solution inside and outside the bird. The advantage that brining has is that the liquid inside the bird has no need to be drawn out, because the concentration of liquid is greater outside of the bird than inside of it. In order to reach a state of equilibrium, liquid from the outside will be drawn in. Putting dry salt on the outside causes the opposite effect. Quite simply, if you juxtapose dry salt with a non-saline liquid, the liquid will move to the dry salt, as it is far easier for a liquid to move than a solid. As the liquid in the turkey moves to meet the dry salt on the exterior, it escapes from the meat, leaving you with dry meat. If you put a concentrated saline solution next to a non-slaine liquid, the liquids will move toward one another, and since the the interior of the flesh is has less salinity, the external solution will move toward the center of the bird, adding juice and flavor to the finished product.

The negative effect of putting dry salt on the exterior of meat is diminshed over time, as the liquid that moves to the surface of the meat from the interior will become a concentrated saline liquid at some point. Once that happens, the exterior salt, now in solution form, will start acting as a brine and move toward the center again. So the bottom line is, if you salt your meat immeditately before cooking, you won't dry out the meat, but you won't be adding any flavor to anything other than the outermost surface of the meat. Fine for scallopini, but useless for a thick steak or a bird. If you salt the meat an hour before cooking, you will draw out moisture. If you salt meat several hours before cooking, you will season it. But to guard against the uncertainty of all this, just brine it.

Thanks Jimmy - that sort of makes sense.

Do you know the one about the gameshow, where the contestant takes a pot-shot at three choices, on of which is a car an the other two are booby prizes? After the choice the gameshow host takes away a booby prize and asks if the contestant wants to change his mind - he always should as the odds are then stacked in his favour. I had to explain that one last night and this seems a lot easier.

I am familiar with that puzzle. When I explain it to people who get confused, I find that the simplest way to get them to understand is to divide the choices into 2 groups. The choice that the person makes is Group 1. The two non-selected choices become Group 2. Now ask the person how often the big prize will be in Group 1. They will say: "One out of every three times." Now ask them how often the big prize will be in Group 2. They should say: "Two out of every three times." Viola! If you switch your choice, you move from Group 1 to Group 2, and change your odds from 1 in 3 to 2 in 3.

Posted by Killer B:"That's about it but I have no idea what the alto stringed instrument has to do with it."

An obscure reference Killer B, but it made me laugh. Who knew being a fan of English folk music would come in handy on a wine board? Happy Thanksgiving to all.

So this past Thanksgiving I decided to give a Lobel's turkey a try. I followed Lobel's recommendation and did not brine it, just cooked it at 325 until the meat thermometer between the leg and breast read 150 degrees, let stand for about 20-30 minutes. It was done nearly perfectly, and I will say the turkey was very tasty, but for the price I cannot recommend Lobel's, as it was only marginally better than normal store-bought fresh turkey. The price, OTH, was many times magnitude that of store bought fresh. We enjoyed it a great deal, but I won't buy turkey from Lobel's again, I'll stick to the beef.

I brined 2 turkey breasts and roasted them. It was pretty easy. Purchased from Whole Foods, fresh. Unfortunately I only needed one breast not two. I also grilled a tri-tip which was clearly more interesting to most of my guests than the turkey.

Sounds more interesting to me and I wasn't even one of your guests!

I did the Whole Foods fresh bird also.  I paid $23 for 10 pounds and for my first bird, it turned out pretty good.

We brined a 26 pounder from Diestel.  IMO the taste of a brined turkey is far and away better than a non-brined turkey.  Brining is one of the three required steps to making great roasted turkey.  The second is to start the bird upside down for an hour or two (the bigger the bird the longer it needs to roast upside down).  The third is to saturate cheese cloth with butter which is draped over the top of the turkey once you turn the turkey right side up.  Keep the cheese cloth saturated until a half hour before the turkey is done.  At a half hour before completion remove the cheese cloth so that the turkey's skin can brown.