Chef Minnillo:  “Brining is really a process of covering the problems that most people have at home when they do turkey, which is they overcook it. If you brine your turkey and you overcook it, it’ll still be moist.”

 Quick Bites:  “.. I would think that many people would wonder how could you keep it from getting salty, tasting salty?

Chef Minnillo : “Well the brine itself is not, I mean, it does have salt in it, but it also has sugar so the sugar cuts the salt down.

QB: And besides salt and sugar, you can put a variety of other spices?

Chef Minnillo: “You’re kind of wide open. Our recipe called for two gallons of water, three cups of salt, two cups of sugar, and then that’s where we can make our differences. You could use, if you didn’t want to use water, you could use two gallons of apple cider and do an apple-cider brine. And then you would slice up maybe six apples and put it in there. So we did 2 gallons of cranberry juice and sliced up 6 oranges and threw some fresh sage. And you have a lot of leeway on that, too. You could use thyme, you could use tarragon, you could use any sweet herb like basil.

QB:  Could you actually have a spicy brine?

Chef Minnillo: “Sure you could put a lot of different spices, a star anise, allspice, you could put in some chili peppers. And you just bring that to a boil, and then you let it cool down, and then you put whether it’s a turkey or capons or a pork loin in a bucket where it’s submerged and the item is always covered. And keep it in there for 24 hours and cook it the next day. You’re going to get a home run.”

QB:I can certainly understand why people don’t normally do this at home and you find a lot of people who haven’t heard about it, but I guess if you did want to do it at home you would need a freezer or a large space.

Chef Minnillo: “But we live in Cleveland so you could put it outside. It’s cold enough outside right now.  And obviously cover it with aluminum foil and elevate it so you don’t get outdoor creatures getting it. But keep it outside where it goes 40 degrees at night.”

QB:  Now, you said at first that if you brine it doesn’t matter if you overcook, but…

Chef Minnillo: “I mean if you crush it, brining’s not going to save you, but a lot of times people cook, and here’s the key to brining and to cooking a turkey: Start it out for half an hour at 475 or 500 and then lower your temperature to 300. And depending on how big it is, like we had a 20- pound turkey, we did 475 and in a convection oven with a high fan for 45 minutes. Then we lowered it to 300 for about I think four hours and it came out perfectly. And you don’t need to put foil over it or anything and you don’t need to pat the turkey down. When you pull it out, it’s wet. You don’t need to dry it off. It’s ready to go. You don’t need to stuff it. I’m from the belief you just throw some celery and carrot and onion in the cavity and make your stuffing in another pan.”    

Chef Paul Minillo says his own Thanksgiving is pretty traditional . His Irish wife insists on candied sweet potatoes with marshmallows.  And as always, he’ll add a little Italian touch with chestnut sausage stuffing. That will be at home with the family. Flour will be closed on Thanksgiving Day.

As for the day after Thanksgiving, we’ll cover that next week on Quick Bites with tips from the Western Reserve School of Cooking on what to do with the leftovers.

I’m Vivian Goodman, 89-7, WKSU