Brining: what they don't tell you ... salty gravy.

Hi,

As a public service, lets have this matter thought out and settled before it is really needed.

I am one who likes to make their gravy from pan drippings. It's just that the drippings from a brined bird can often be too salty. I typically pour most of the roasting pan's liquid into a measuring cup to simply skim away the fat, which also carries salt. I use paper towels to wick the last of the fat on the surface. To the bits still clinging to the roasting pan, I use unsalted stock and wine to loosen and dissolve those bits with my whisk.

If I had not brined the turkey, I would have used the turkey fat to make a roux. For a brined turkey to reduce the salt, I will make a roux from unsalted butter and flour, then incorporate the pan drippings and use stock to dilute to a desired thickness. I cross my fingers and hope the salt may be at an acceptable level at first taste.

If I roasted vegetables (carrots, onions, celery) in the roasting pan, then I add it to the degreased drippings with unsalted stock and use my blender wand to puree the vegetables. If there is enough roasted vegetables, it will be thick enough without roux. The gravy tastes great and nobody detects the vegetables because they were so impregnated with turkey flavor they are undetectable as vegetables. Again, I cross my fingers and hope the gravy tastes acceptably salty at first taste.

If the gravy is too salty, my initial reaction is to dilute it further. I have seen suggestions of simmering potatoes or bread to absorb the salt. First off, I have read enough to know its been independently tested to not really work. Secondly, when you are making gravy, you are at the tail end of meal's prep. Waiting ten minutes for the bread and potato (or whatever) to absorb this salt (if it really works, which it doesn't) isn't very welcome.

A few years ago, Gary and Jazzfood with other LTHr's helped prepare a Christmas Dinner for the Salvation Army, where the gravy for the roast beef was too salty:

The only slight problem we had all day was the gravy, which was overly salty. This is where it really paid to have a professional chef in the kitchen, when additional water and a bit of lemon juice didn't work, Jazzfood simply surveyed the kitchen pantry, added a food service size can of tomato sauce and, presto, not salty, moreover, a smooth delicious gravy.

Stock and lemon juice (wine, vinegar) I can understand as part of the battery of tools to resolve gravy's saltiness. I don't quite see adding tomato sauce to a turkey gravy. Of course, when you are desperate, you will do what you have to do.

I did see another idea for resolving salty gravy by making another roux with stock, then adding the salty gravy until the flavor is there and the salt at an acceptable level. I guess it is a variation of diluting further, then adding a paste of butter and flour to thicken the gravy.

Somehow I always manage to have a decent gravy. However I am sure for some who may be brining a bird for the first time, this salty gravy may be a surprise. I am also hoping to learn any additional strategies to deal with this pesky problem. When I was a teenager, my Aunt Mary Beth advised to have a can of turkey gravy just in case all else fails. I never bought one.

Regards,

The first year I did the Cook's Illustrated brine I thought the bird was too salty to really enjoy and the drippings were too salty to use.

I basically cut the salt in half and both have worked fine ever since. The bird gets the apparent benefits of brining without seeming too salty, the drippings are fine for incorporating into gravy (which will mainly be made from the neck and other bits turned into a stock).

In reading the Thanksgiving thread, and remembering that gravy is one of the delights of the holiday, I have resolved to roast up some turkey parts ahead of time and make some emergency backup gravy. We won't be brining our bird, but there's all sorts of things that can happen to a gravy, some of them recoverable, some not.

I'm with Mhays on this. When I brine the bird, I just ask my purveyor for a couple of extra turkey necks and giblets and make my gravy from those. It's always worked out fine and I don't have to wait until the bird is done cooking to start the gravy, either.

=R=

ronnie_suburban wrote:I'm with Mhays on this. When I brine the bird, I just ask my purveyor for a couple of extra turkey necks and giblets and make my gravy from those. It's always worked out fine and I don't have to wait until the bird is done cooking to start the gravy, either.

This is exactly how my dad always did it, and until a few years ago, I figured that was the norm.

Well, the ultimate way to do that is to simply go to your freezer and pull out the jar of turkey stock you made from last year's bird AFTER Thanksgiving dinner.

I actually did do that, and have used the stock happily on a number of occasions over the past year.

It's not easy to will yourself back into the kitchen to start up another pot cooking in the midst of a tryptophan haze, but it's worth it.

Mike G wrote:I actually did do that, and have used the stock happily on a number of occasions over the past year.

It's not easy to will yourself back into the kitchen to start up another pot cooking in the midst of a tryptophan haze, but it's worth it.

Well, last year's post Thanksgiving assignment was to teach the in-laws how to use a carcass to make soup.

The way around doing it AFTER the meal is to do all the prep work for the stock as you are preparing the meal originally ... I mean, to cook a Thanksgining dinner, you have to do all the chopping of the celery, onions, and carrots anyway.

The stock pot was turned on when we sat down for dinner. I tossed in all of the vegetables and I ended the in-laws lon held tradition of stripping every moelcule of meat off the the bones of the carcass. I think my MIL was in tears when she saw a 1/2# of meat on the carcass going into the soup.

I am not cooking turkey for Thanksgiving this year ... I am just hoping that I don't end up at Skyline Chili like the last time we went to my cousin's house and she tried to cook a turkey.

HI,

I reduced the salt by 25% for a 12-hour brine, then rinsed and allowed the bird to drain and dry for 12 hours. I had no issue of oversalted gravy or if it was considered oversalty it was borderline.

Thanks for ideas on how to resolve this issue.

Regards,

I have been using Alton Brown's Good Eats Roast Turkey brine recipe for the past 4 or 5 years and have never had an issue with it being too salty. I usually rinse the bird really well before roasting/smoking. We then have used the drippings for our gravy and it came out great. When I smoked the whole bird on the WSM, I placed a disposable pie pan on the lower grate to catch dripping which we used for gravy. That was my favorite because the gravy had such a great smokey flavor to it.

I recommend AB's brine, you can find the recipe on the foodnetwork website.