Turkey cure

[brandekm]

I am planning on using the cure recipe that you did on the YouTube video about curing and smoking whole turkeys. My question is do you use the cold phosphate in the brine or is the pump mixture an adequate amount of phosphate if I don’t have leftover from the pump? Thanks!

[Jonathon]

brandekm Great question, if I am understanding it correctly. Are you asking if you need to add more phosphate after you have pumped to your cover brine? If that is the questino then no, just make up a 50% strength solution out of the cure and cover the turkey with that.

I hope I understood correctly? The holding period after injecting is really just to allow it to equalize within the turkey. Phosphate in your brine wouldnt hurt anything but it also wouldn’t really help.

[brandekm]

Jonathon, Great thanks, I have two smaller birds and I figured the pump mixture at the amount you used would be enough to pump both birds but I wouldn’t have any left to dilute so I didn’t want to add more phosphate to the cover brine if it didn’t need it. Thanks again.

[Larry Joe Sample]

Jonathon I don’t have any phosphate. Is free binder the same? How important it is? Thanks Minnesota Larry

[Jonathon]

Larry Joe Sample No, cold phosphate and biner do somewhat similar things but they are not the same. Cold phosphates increases the pH of the meat and therefore the water holding capacity of the meat. Things like carrot fiber or potato starch are going to help keep moisture in the meat but they do it by actually binding water to themselves, they don’t alter the meat.

I’ve never used a binder on an injected piece of meat, though Excalibur does make an injectible carrot fiber, at least I am pretty sure that they do!

[Larry Joe Sample]

Jonathon thanks for the help. I’ll be ordering some.

[Larry Joe Sample]

Larry Joe Sample when mixing up the injection brine for 6, 20# turkeys I mix up enough for 1 20#er , 6 times, right? Cold phosphate at the rate for 20#s?

[Jonathon]

Larry Joe Sample Cold Phosphate would be at the rate of 2 oz of phosphate per 25 lb of turkey. So, if you have 120 lb of turkey then use 9.6 oz of cold phosphate.

For the Turkey Cure use 1.29 lb of the cure to 1 gallon of water for a 10% pump. So that would be enough to pump 96.3 lb of turkey but remember, you want to have a 50% strength solution after you inject to hold it in overnight.

So, you pump it to 10% it’s green weight, then make up a solution that is 1.29 lb of cure to 2 gallons of water and let them sit in that overnight.

If you want to just do it 6 times though you can absolutely do that!