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moist, its primary role is as a flavour enhancer.
What many people love most about turkeys and roasts is the outer seasoning - the savoury herbs, flavourful rubs, and pastes that create a delicious crust. However, it’s only on the surface; very little, if any, of that flavour penetrates the meat.
Injection allows you to put all that great flavour inside the meat. Not just liquids like water and fruit juice, but solid material such as herbs and spices, as well as sugar, honey, butter and oils. What you can inject is limited only by your imagination and the size of your needle. And, since the skin is unaffected, it still gets crispy during cooking.
Unlike brining, which can take days and needs to be planned for ahead of time, injection can be done at the last minute, so no waiting is necessary. There are also no large buckets or containers taking up valuable real estate in the refrigerator, space you usually need leading up to a big holiday dinner.
As with brines, making your own injection isn’t hard, but there are also plenty of quality pre-packaged injections. Butcher BBQ, Kosmo’s Q, Meat Church, Big Poppa Smokers, Sweet Smoke Q, and Victory Lane BBQ all have good ones which are available in the UK.
While injecting adds more flavour to meat than brining, it isn’t quite as good at keeping meat moist. You can inject a brine and let it sit overnight, but it’s not quite as effective as soaking the meat. Injecting can also be more work. Because herbs and spices need to be small enough to pass through the tip of the needle, you have to grind up any ingredients in a spice mill, food processor, or coffee grinder to avoid clogging the needle.
Brine & Injection: the Best of Both Worlds
Though we’ve pitted them against one another, brine and injection aren’t necessarily binary options. It doesn’t have to be an either/or decision, you can brine and inject to take advantage of many of the benefits of each. Doing both methods in tandem gives you the moist meat offered by brining and the flavour provided by injection.
Enjoy your BBQ and have a great Christmas & New Year!!
With acknowledgement and thanks to FireCraft, Inc.
For plenty of brines and injections to pep up your Christmas Turkey visit
Richard Orme