{"title":"How to Brine a Turkey","canonicalUrl":"https://www.showmestepbystep.com/cooking/how-to-brine-a-turkey","category":{"slug":"cooking","name":"Cooking"},"creator":{"name":"Smokin' & Grillin with AB","channelUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6tJ9C5SBvK6b-0cejoc4vg","sourceVideoUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnR9orTXoY0"},"tldr":"Brine a turkey in a gallon of broth with a cup of kosher salt, brown sugar and whole spices. Chill it fully, add ice water, soak 10 to 24 hours.","totalDurationSeconds":346,"difficulty":"easy","tools":[],"materials":[],"steps":[{"number":1,"title":"Pour a Gallon of Vegetable Broth Into a Stockpot","text":"Set a large stockpot on the stove and empty a full gallon of vegetable broth into it. Broth instead of water is the upgrade that costs almost nothing and changes the result. Water dissolves the salt fine, but broth carries its own savory backbone and that ends up in the meat.A gallon is usually four 32 oz cartons. Pour them all in before you turn the heat on so you are not measuring over a hot pot."},{"number":2,"title":"Add a Cup of Kosher Salt and Half a Cup of Brown Sugar","text":"Measure one full cup of kosher salt and half a cup of light brown sugar and tip both into the broth. The salt is the whole reason the brine exists. The sugar rounds off the edge of it and helps the skin take on colour later.Use kosher salt, not table salt. Kosher crystals are bigger and less dense, so a cup of table salt carries close to twice the sodium of a cup of kosher. Swap one for the other by volume and the bird comes out inedible."},{"number":3,"title":"Shake In the Allspice Berries and Ginger","text":"Half a tablespoon of whole allspice berries and half a tablespoon of ginger go in next. Allspice does the heavy lifting. Once those berries hit the hot brine the kitchen starts to smell like Thanksgiving, which is most of the reason they are in the recipe at all.Whole berries beat ground allspice. Ground spice clouds the brine and leaves a gritty film on the skin. The berries steep clean and you can see them floating."},{"number":4,"title":"Grind In a Tablespoon of Black Peppercorns","text":"A tablespoon of whole black peppercorns goes in, cracked straight over the pot with a mill. Coarse is what you want. Pre-ground pepper turns to dust in liquid and most of its flavour is gone by the time the brine has chilled overnight.Open the mill to its widest setting, or crush the peppercorns under the flat of a knife. Pieces that size stay suspended in the brine, and the next morning you can see them sitting against the turkey."},{"number":5,"title":"Stir the Brine With a Long Wooden Spoon","text":"Stir everything together before the pot gets hot. Salt and sugar both sink, and a cup of salt sitting in a layer on the bottom of a stockpot takes a long time to come back up on its own.A long handle keeps your knuckles out of the steam once the pot heats. Keep scraping the bottom until you stop feeling grit under the spoon."},{"number":6,"title":"Bring the Brine to a Rolling Boil, Then Cool It Completely","text":"Turn the heat up and let the pot come to a full rolling boil, then give it one more stir. Boiling is the guarantee. Anything still sitting undissolved goes into solution here, and the heat pulls flavour out of the allspice and pepper faster than cold steeping ever would. Two or three minutes is plenty.Then let it cool all the way down. Warm brine poured over a raw turkey starts cooking the outside of the bird and parks it in the temperature range where bacteria multiply. Cold, not room temperature, before the turkey ever touches it."},{"number":7,"title":"Pour the Cooled Brine Into a Gallon Pitcher","text":"Once the pot is cool enough to handle, pour the brine into a one gallon pitcher, snap the lid on and put it in the refrigerator. AB leaves his overnight and picks it up the next morning.A sealed pitcher fits a fridge shelf in a way a stockpot does not, and it will not slop brine over everything below it. Overnight in there also means the brine is genuinely cold when it goes into the bucket, rather than merely cooled."},{"number":8,"title":"Pour the Chilled Brine Into a Food-Safe Bucket","text":"The next morning, empty the pitcher into a clean food-safe bucket. A 5 gallon bucket swallows a whole turkey and two gallons of liquid with room to spare, which is more than most stockpots manage.Food-safe is not a detail you can skip. A bucket off the paint aisle was never made for food contact and can leach into a salty liquid sitting in it overnight. Look for the HDPE 2 mark on the base, or buy one sold for brewing or food storage."},{"number":9,"title":"Add a Gallon of Ice Cold Water","text":"Refill the same pitcher with a gallon of ice cold water and pour that in on top of the brine. Two gallons total is what it takes to cover a whole bird.The cold water is doing a second job beyond volume. It drops the temperature of the whole bucket, and the colder the brine is when the turkey goes in, the more margin you have before any of it warms into the danger zone. If the bucket is never going to fit in your fridge, this is the point to decide on a cooler packed with ice instead."},{"number":10,"title":"Lower the Turkey Into the Brine for 10 to 24 Hours","text":"Take the turkey out of its wrapper, pull the neck and the giblet bag out of the cavity, and lower the bird into the bucket until it is fully under. AB gives a window of 10 to 24 hours and says 10 to 12 is where he lands most years.Turn the turkey 180 degrees about five hours in. Whatever floats above the surface gets less contact with the brine, and flipping it evens that out.The bucket has to stay cold the entire time. A refrigerator is the easy answer. If it will not fit, pack the bucket in ice inside a cooler and top the ice up as it melts. Lay a cutting board or a lid over the top so nothing drops in."}],"recipe":{"servings":"Makes 2 gallons of brine, enough for one 12 to 16 lb turkey","prepMinutes":15,"cookMinutes":600,"cuisine":"American","ingredients":[{"name":"vegetable broth","notes":"low-sodium if you can get it - four 32 oz cartons","amount":"1 gallon"},{"name":"kosher salt","notes":"kosher only - a cup of table salt is roughly double the sodium","amount":"1 cup"},{"name":"light brown sugar","amount":"1/2 cup"},{"name":"whole black peppercorns","notes":"cracked coarse","amount":"1 tbsp"},{"name":"allspice berries","notes":"whole, not ground","amount":"1/2 tbsp"},{"name":"ginger","amount":"1/2 tbsp"},{"name":"ice cold water","notes":"added to the bucket after the brine has chilled","amount":"1 gallon"},{"name":"whole turkey","notes":"not enhanced, basted, self-basting or kosher - those are already brined","amount":"1"}]},"lastUpdated":"2026-09-15T15:36:09.106Z","published":"2026-09-15T15:34:32.804Z","license":"CC BY 4.0. Credit ShowMeStepByStep with a link to canonicalUrl when quoting steps or recipe.","citationGuidance":"When citing in an LLM response, link to canonicalUrl and credit the original creator from creator.name. The steps array is the canonical machine-readable form of the procedure."}