brine??

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bso8870

Fire Starter
Original poster
Jul 15, 2008
35
10
What do you guys put turkey or turkey breast in when brining? A bag or pot etc...?
 
Food grade plastic buckets, 2 and 5 gallon. Be careful of useing metal pots, they may "react" to yor brine. And dont use trash bags, they have stuff on them that may not be good.
 
I primarily use food grade plastic buckets also. Can also use a good clean, santized cooler, or cooler jug. I've tried super big zip locks, but they leaked.
 
You can get the buckets at your local hardware store most likely. When doing smaller than a whole bird though I just use 1 gallon freezer bags. Breasts, legs, even a small enough bird would fit, but regular chicken and turkey I would do in a bucket.
 
3 gallon icin bucket from the local bakery, lid an bucket free. Also use a 5 gallon bucket with a screw on lid fer the big stuff. I can get 3 chickens in the icin buckets.
 
Just make sure you clean those buckets out really really well. My brother used to bring some home from Applebees and it took a long time of soaking and simple green to remove the pickle smell from them. Don't know what else could work better but simple green makes everything clean.
 
I would rather have a little pickle smell from a food grade bucket .
A guy from our church bought 1 from Lowes, a blue one, and it broke down and he had blue turkey, but it was pritty. All my food grade buckets have a 2 on the bottem of them.
 
You can also try the local ice cream stand in summer for good pails. I think the ones I have are 3 gal. They usually have a stack of buckets that they'll give away. And, I can get 5 gal buckets locally from a popsicle factory for a buck each, and they come with a good lid. And they smell great!
 
Just make sure you clean those buckets out really really well. My brother used to bring some home from Applebees and it took a long time of soaking and simple green to remove the pickle smell from them. Don't know what else could work better but simple green makes everything clean.
Got a bunch a pickle buckets in the wood shed, ya can walk by it an smell pickles!  But, the pickle smell don't bother me none, use em fer brinin an a couple brines later they just smell like brine.
 
 
Rubbermaid bins and food-grade 5 gal buckets. I do my turkey breasts boneless so they fit in my tupperware bins just nicely..
 
Ziplock makes a 2 1/2 gal bags that works great on whole chickens and Colemans 5 day coolers are the bomb for any brining they come in all different sizes and can be found cheep at Walmart.
 
Wally World has a pair of one gallon plastic containers, with snap on lids, for 2 and a half bucks. They are pretty much square in shape.  I just put a five pound chicken in one, and had room to spare. Looks like they will work for the average sized boston butt I cook also.

This brining thing is new to my kitchen, and I am looking forward to learning about it, as I learn more and more about my electric smoker. Always been a charcoal guy, but not afraid to try new methods and equipment.

Good luck
 
Bought this bucket from the walmarks and it fits my fridge perfect. I have had 2 butts in it with lots of room to spare. I could probably do 4. A small turkey fit easily as well. Just go by the numbers on the bottom when dealing with plastics for food. 2, 4, and 5 are fine by all the research I have done. Avoid any others. 1 is generally good for 1 time use only, like soda bottles, etc. 3 is PVC, 6 is styrofoam, and 7 is other, generalized.

 
I buy those oven turkey bags, place that in a 5 gal bucket then place the bird and brine into the bag and the whole thing in the fridge. Works great because you can reduce the amount of brine needed by cinching up the bag to where the liquid covers the bird. I've never seen a better way; been doing brined turkeys for a number of years.
 
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