Mike Van de Elzen: Christmas brined chicken/turkey

Christmas brined chicken or turkey

Cook time: 35 minutes 

Prep time: 24 hours 

Serves: 6-8 people 

1 sized 18 chicken or small turkey  

2 bay leaves  

2 lemon, crushed  

10 peppercorns  

5 star anise pods  

5 ltr water 250gm  

uniodised salt  

1 tbsp flaky salt  

2 tbsp Dijon mustard  

2 tbsp sunflower oil 

Firstly, clear some room in your fridge to fit a large pot or container.  

Make up the brine by combining 1/2 the water to the salt into a pot and gently heat until the salt is dissolved. The water doesn't need to boil.  

Once the salt has dissolved, add the the rest of the water to the brine followed by the rest of the ingredients, allow to cool.  

Take the chicken or turkey, removing any giblets and rinsing off any excess blood. Place into a pot and then cover with the brine. Refrigerate for 12 hours.  

After this time, remove the bird and rinse off the excess brine. Pat dry and brush with Dijon mustard, then sprinkle over the salt.

Preheat an oven or wood fired oven to 200*c. Place the chicken into the middle of the oven.  

Cook until the internal temperature of the chicken / turkey reaches 75*c in the centre of the bread. Remove and allow to rest breast down for at least 10 minutes before carving.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks EDB.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Mike vander Alson, our resident chef joins me, Now, good morning,
Good morning. I'm just reading your very thorough notes on
how I'm going to get myself organized for Christmas. We
are going to this week, we're entering sort of part
three of four of our Mate Christmas Food Easier segment,
and we're going to talk about the main course.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
It's probably the most It is the most important part,
I think, don't you.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah, well I like a nibble like dessert. Yeah, next week,
Well I suppose I suppose the thing is that very
really do we actually have, you know, some nibbles or
something to start with, and then a and then a
main meal and then a dessert, so you know, you
want to enjoy all of it when you do have
a luxury of.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
And I think I think the most pressure probably comes
on on main course because you've got you've got elements
of cookie. Yeah like that, Like the beef needs to
be medium rare or the lamb racks need to be
just under and the fish needs to be just cooked.
So we're with dessert. I kind of feel. You know,
you cook the dessert or you make the dessert sits
in the fridge, it's ready to go.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, it's done. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. Now, you're right.
This is probably the pressure part of the meal.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
So how can we make it easier? So I've written
down a series of notes. So probably the most important
part is let's start by the cooking of the meat,
so brining. I talk about brining so often. So that's
saturating or soaking your chicken and your pork and a
wet brine, so turkeys, chickens, pork. What the brining does

(01:49):
is not only adds flavor, but it also tenderizes the
meat and it locks in the moisture. So ten percent salt,
so ten percent uneied salt, ninety water, chucking a couple
of lemons, give it a quick whisk into the salt, dissolves,
and then dropping your chickens, so chickens and pork twelve
hours overnight. Turkeys, however, cut the brine down to five percent.
But what you do is increase the time that it's

(02:10):
in the brine, because it's such a big beast, to
twenty four hours instead of twelve hours. Larger cuts of meat. Say,
if you're doing like a whole scotch or a rack
or even fish, what I do is I and we'll
do this, and you know, for all Christmas parties, we'll
add up until yesterday. You know, we sear off all
the meat first. So take your scotch, take your lamb racks,
take even take your fish. Oil it, season it and

(02:33):
then put it into a super hot cast iron pan
to get all the color onto the outside. And then
you can set it aside, brush and digital mustard. And
then you know when you actually go to cooking it
or when you go to cook it, you just put
it into the oven at that point and cook it
to it's to your desired amount.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Okay, So you can leave it for a period of
time there.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
It doesn't dry out. It doesn't, yeah, because it's all
been said off and it could just sit there. Like
even the fish. You can see it get some color
into the outside. You could potentially put that into your
fridge and when you want to serve it, you just
pull it out and fire it through a hot oven
or a barbecue. It's just making life a little bit easier,
making it on the day. Glazing your hand, you can

(03:11):
do the glaze the day before, so cut the skin
off your hand, make serious of cuts across the fat.
And then what I do is I take orange marmalade
and just mix it with a little bit of whiskey
and then brush it over the top. And then on
the day, all you need to do is heat your
oven to hundred degrees, fire your ham into the oven
for about thirty to thirty five minutes. And bear in mind,
your hand's already cooked, it's already been brined, it's already

(03:32):
been cooked, so all you're doing is just getting that
plays onto the outside of it. So all these things
can be done beforehand, just to make your day a
little bit easier. And also think about the leftovers, because
there are going to be leftovers. So you slice your
meat the next day on a cold meat platter, shred
the white meats down, put it through a roue that's
a great pie filling. Shed your dark meats down. Put
that through some stir fry or some fried rice. Even

(03:53):
cooked vegetables, they can go through a for tata or
a Spanish elmet, and even things like if you've got leftover,
smoke first or something like that. Doubting you're going to
But if you do, you could just fire that through
like a risotto the next day right at the end,
just before you add your palms and your butter and
makes it delicious, smoke fisheries on it.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
So this is where we take all the containers that
we stored the pre cut prepared foods and vegetables and
things and that we spoke about the other week, and
we just use them for the leftovers. Do you put
your ham in a in a slightly damp handbag or
pillow cass as my mother.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
Used to Yep, definitely, and you salt that water as well,
so you wet, you wet the towel, and you also
salt that water that you're wetting the tower because the
salt just adds a little bit of preserving element to it.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
And of course prepping all those veggues as we spoke about.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
Yeah, they just try and do as much the day before,
try and do as you know, two days before, just
so that on the day everything's done pretty much and
it just needs to be assembled very SI.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
You sound like you need a break. It sounds like
you've been I've seen a few too many Christmas parties,
all right.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
Like it's relentless. But we finished the last big one
yesterday and we've come to the end. And it didn't
help that when I entered into the journey of Christmas parties,
I came down with COVID. Oh, Mike, it's been a
tough three weeks. It's been a tough We got there.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
You got there, I'm sure, with the help of your
fabulous family and everything. Thank you so much, Mike. Mike
has a Christmas brind chicken or turkey recipe for us.
We will get that up on our website. News Talk
z'b dot co dot inz, food slash Sunday, or you
can find that its good from scratch dot co dot inzed.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it Be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.