Day one - Thanksgiving prep

So Thanksgiving might not be until Thursday, but when you try out a new recipe every year like I do for the main course the preparation has to start early.

Every year since I started working at the Weekend Pinnacle I've tried a new turkey-cooking method. One year I followed the example of a coworker who smokes his turkey with rosemary. The low-and-slow method left the turkey moist while the rosemary gave it plenty of flavor inside and out. That was also the year I learned about aromatics - basically herbs, celery and onions that can be stuffed into the cavity of a turkey in lieu of stuffing to offer up some more flavor.

The next year I tried a brine I saw on Alton Brown's show. A brine is basically a mix of salt and seasonings, usually in a chicken broth and ice bath. The turkey sits for up to 12 hours in the wet mixture before roasting it as desired. It was the moistest turkey I'd ever had and the most flavorful. The basic principle of a brine is osmosis - the salt helps draw the other flavors into the turky so whatever flavors are in the brine - honey, pepper, rosemary - ends up inside the meat, all the way down to the bone.

This year I was all set to put together a wet brine and roast a turkey when I happened across an L.A. Times article by Russ Parsons, a food columnist. He wrote about how he discovered the dry-brine method works just as well as wet brine without all the hassle of keeping a turkey in a water bath for days. So I was intrigued enough to try out a new method this year. Hence the prep work on Monday for a Thursday meal.

Dry-brining a turkey basically means rubbing it down with salt and letting it sit in a ziplock bag for three days. According to Parsons the turkey can absorb whatever flavors are mixed in with the salt, such as herbs or lemon zest. For our turkey, we created a salt mix that included fresh rosemary, thyme, dry poultry seasonings and fresh lemon zest. The mix only smelled just like Thanksgiving as it was sprinkled onto the turkey. The hardest part of the method so far was trying to get a frozen turkey into a large ziplock bag - for some reason, the rock salt messed with the zipper so it wouldn't seal. Our solution was just to double bag it. The turkey is back in the freeze to absorb lots of flavor before its time to cook.

Check in for more updates on the Thanksgiving feast later this week.

Photo by MELISSA FLORES

A still frozen turkey is sprinkled with salt and herbs before being put in a plastic bag as part of the dry-brine method.