Brined Butterball

This weekend C and I attended a "turkey tasting" with our local chapter of Slow Foods... think wine tasting, but with turkey instead. We were to compare a standard, supermarket bird with a heritage White Holland turkey.

We volunteered to make the standard bird for the event.

Here is our bird almost submerged in the brine. This time around we used salt, sugar, garlic, bay leaves, peppercorns, and an orange.


After brining, we roasted in the oven. Inside the cavity we used a kitchen sink of aromatics


Our 20 pound beauty...


For those who might be interested, here are the two birds side by side. The heritage bird (on the right) was a very slender looking bird, unlike the butterball that looked a bit like Dolly Parton.