"altonbrown" news and stories

When you're snacking on edamame, part of the experience is freeing the beans from their green pods. If they're for a dish, however, there's a quicker way to shell a soybean.

When baking, lots of recipes require a greased and floured pan. Luckily, there's a time-saver.

The above video, which I originally posted back in October, is a perfect top to your tasty brine. See Gordon Ramsay's whole recipe printed out at FoodTVBlog. Adding one truffle to the mix won't break the bank, and it will give you lots of foodie cred.

But for roasting, I still love Alton Brown's technique, with a few adjustments*:

A few minutes before roasting, heat oven to 500 degrees.

Take the brined, rinsed, dried, and truffled turkey and place it in the roasting pan, on a solid layer of whole small onions and quartered carrots. (This will give you insanely delicious roasted vegetables as a side.)

Loosely pack stuffing into the cavity, and create a mound in front (you must have stuffing crispies!).

Tuck back wings and coat whole bird liberally with canola (or other neutral) oil.

Roast on lowest level of the oven at 500 degrees F. for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and cover breast with double layer of aluminum foil, insert probe thermometer into thickest part of the breast and return to oven, reducing temperature to 350 degrees F. Set thermometer alarm (if available) to 161 degrees. Let turkey rest, loosely covered for 15 minutes before carving.

*The bird WILL be stuffed!

The best and easiest way to take your turkey and amp it up from tasty to epically wonderful is a good brine. If you're new to the world or brining, follow Alton Brown's technique below. If you're not big on the flavors of ginger and allspice, try something like a Simon and Garfunkel flavor combination.

Alton's Good Eats Brine for a 14-16 pound turkey:

* 1 cup kosher salt
* 1/2 cup light brown sugar
* 1 gallon vegetable stock
* 1 tablespoon black peppercorns
* 1/2 tablespoon allspice berries
* 1/2 tablespoon candied ginger
* 1 gallon iced water

Combine all brine ingredients, except ice water, in a stockpot, and bring to a boil. Stir to dissolve solids, then remove from heat, cool to room temperature, and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled.

Early on the day of cooking, (or late the night before) combine the brine and ice water in a clean 5-gallon bucket. Place thawed turkey breast side down in brine, cover, and refrigerate or set in cool area (like a basement) for 6 hours. Turn turkey over once, half way through brining.

Remove bird from brine and rinse inside and out with cold water. Discard brine.

Continue on for roasting instructions.

.

When I was in high school, I had a love-hate relationship with science classes. Geology was fine, biology was okay, and chemistry...well, chemistry was hell. Mrs. Olech, the troll who taught the class, regularly flunked half her students and had a teaching manner that made Alan Greenspan seem bouncy and exciting.

Ironically, while I flunked chem, I aced my cooking classes. Even at the time, I thought that this was a little weird; after all, what is cooking if not a chemical process? The subtle adjustment of flavors, the cultivation of certain bacteria, the measured combination of leavening chemicals are all, basically, a mix of applied chemistry and biology. However, cooking class captured my imagination and attention in a way that chemistry didn't.

Reading a recent profile of Alton Brown, I realize that the problem lay with Mrs. Olech and her ilk. The simple fact is that science can be a lot of fun, if it is applied in a way that is relevant and exciting. I was surprised to learn that, like me, Brown found his science classes "boring beyond words." Even now, as he has built his own store of scientific knowledge, he admits to having discarded academic journals and scholarly papers because of their inability to engage his interest.