Using Salt and Science, We Can Roast a (Nearly) Perfect Bird

Dry-salting is, of course, much easier and more time- and space-saving than brining. But it can be risky, as a little too much salt will render the meat almost inedible and a lot drier. Again, a measured approach can lead to a good result, albeit not as good as with brining and without the same flavor advantages.

Cook's Illustrated suggests a dry-salt method using 1 1/4 teaspoons salt per pound of meat. Following the complicated multi-step technique in the magazine, I found that the cooked meat ended up being 30 percent lighter than when it was raw, an outcome similar to that of unsalted turkey. Repeating the technique without the many steps -- just salting about 18 hours before cooking -- I achieved a similar result. In both cases the lightly salted meat seemed tastier and juicier than the unsalted meat but not as juicy or flavorful as the brined bird.

According to Cook's and others, dry-salting initially pulls moisture out but then returns it over time. Scientists I talked to called such a thing improbable, saying the salt returns to the meat without carrying the lost moisture back with it. Indeed, during my experiments the raw meat lost 4 to 6 percent of its weight during the salting process and never regained any of it. But although it lost just as much water as the unsalted meat, it seemed juicier, probably because of the way salting affects the muscle and connective tissue. (By contrast, during brining my turkey gained about 8 percent weight, and during cooking it lost 24 percent of weight compared with when it was raw and untreated.)

Perhaps an even more misunderstood turkey technique is basting, which is supposed to help moisture penetrate the meat. It doesn't. When you shower, the water doesn't pass through your skin, and the skin of the turkey is just as water-repellent. However, basting does have some effect: Using fat speeds up cooking, because fat is a conductor of heat. Using water (such as cooking juices) slows down cooking in much the same way your skin cools off when water evaporates from it.

Surprisingly, scientists have found that one of the most significant effects of basting comes from simply opening the oven door. That drops the temperature, sometimes as much as 100 or 150 degrees, and depending on your oven, it may take 10 or 15 minutes or longer for the oven temperature to recover. That gives the meat time to rest. But the same thing would happen if you opened the oven door and sang a song, or just turned down the temperature.

To really get moisture, such as basting juices, into the meat, you need a syringe, which is why some recipes call for injecting the bird with liquid or fat before cooking. That is a trick often used by commercial producers, which inject water or brine using hundreds of tiny needles. But domestic food syringes make larger holes that create an easy escape route for the liquid you just added. I instead use the syringe to inject juices after cooking. When the flesh is cooked it is much spongier, and this is a great way to add flavor and moisture to the meat.

Although most recipes tell you to start roasting the bird at high temperatures and then to gradually reduce the heat, Barham at the University of Bristol recommends doing the opposite. By cooking the turkey at a relatively low temperature with stock or water in a roasting pan underneath, you steam the bird, a highly effective way to transfer heat while keeping the temperature low. (The steam rising from the water is at 212 degrees or a bit hotter.) The turkey is finished in a dry oven at a slightly higher temperature to get a crisp skin and a rich, roasted flavor before it is allowed to rest for almost an hour to give moisture and gelatin from the connective tissue time to set.

Then, finally, the bird is on the table, in all its splendor -- or at least the closest thing to splendor I am capable of. At the end of this long process I always find myself surprised at the complexity of it all. There are so many things to think about just to get dinner on the table. But then again, there are also so many things to be thankful for. Even, as it turns out, the bird.

Andreas Viestad, author of "Where Flavor Was Born" and co-host of the new public television series "Perfect Day," can be reached at http://www.andreasviestad.com or food@washpost.com. His Gastronomer column appears monthly.