Turkey question

I'd be concerned about over-salting it if your brine calls for salt.

Bottom line, I would not do it as what you use for a brine may not be compatible with what it was brined with before packaging and may give it an off taste with conflicting flavors.

The short answer is: yes, brining can add a little more flavor, but not much, and certainly not as much as an un-injected piece of meat.


Here’s how brine works: the water molecule attaches to a salt molecule and the salt molecule attaches to the protein in the muscle. The muscle (meat) “holds” water with salt acting as the glue.

The meat can only physically hold X% of water. The turkey processors inject the turkey with a salt water solution for 1 reason and 1 reason only: to make the turkey hold water therefore making the turkey weigh more so they can sell it for more weight (based on price per pound).

Yes, injecting “pre-brines” and can make the turkey juicer. But that’s an affect, not the reason they inject. They wouldn’t add an extra processing step and the cost of the salt solution if they weren’t making more money by doing so.

Ok, so the turkey is injected with Z% of solution. It holds Y% but still has a little room to hold more to get to X%. So brining yourself can add more water to the turkey. So yes, bringing can help. But…it’s only adding a little bit more to your turkey, not a lot. Because the turkey can only hold X% to begin with.

It will help if you want to add flavor to your brine. The water in the solution can attach to the flavor molecules and then the turkey meat holds that water. But, again, it’s not as much as it could be if the turkey was not already injected.

Is it worth it? More than likely not.

Does it help? A little bit, yes.

Will it hurt? Not at all (as long as you aren’t trying to get a “natural, no water added product”).

What he said.

No.