This is the dry brine I put on my Thanksgiving turkey every year, including the year I got the call to smoke a bird for the family at the last minute — there is always time for a dry brine.
Every November the internet fills up with five-gallon buckets. Turkeys sloshing in coolers, fridge shelves coming out, somebody’s brine bag leaking onto the butter dish. I have done all of that, and I am here to tell you the bucket is optional.
The brine I actually use — the one on my Thanksgiving bird, the one I reached for the year a family member called at the last minute and asked if I would smoke a turkey to go with their ham — is a dry brine. Salt and a short list of seasonings, rubbed on the bird, two days in the fridge, done. No liquid, no hoisting a forty-pound pot, and the turkey tastes like turkey, because nothing got diluted along the way.
This is that brine, with the dosing worked out properly: by weight, for both brands of kosher salt, at four common bird sizes. That dosing table is the part most brine recipes skip, and it is the reason most brined turkeys come out too salty. More on that below — it matters more than any ingredient in the blend.