Thanksgiving has always been a special Holiday for me because it was new to me, being French and all, no pilgrims over there. The first time I experienced Thanksgiving dinner was about 12 years ago with my boyfriend of the time’s family. And that was the most chocking moment of my food life: mushrooms out of a can as well as the cranberries, too thick and full of sodium gravy, dry as the desert turkey, green beans so cooked they didn’t taste like green beans anymore. I know it was food terrorism and I almost cried that day the food was so bad! I ate it though just to be polite (my mother’s teachings).

After that meal, I promised myself that I will learn how to make a proper Thanksgiving dinner with all fresh ingredients and everything made from scratch.

If you are like me, your Thanksgiving dinner menu and guest list are finalized.

This year, my boyfriend and I are doing Thanksgiving at our house. No sitting dinner because we don’t have the room for a big table but an informal get together for our friends “orphan for the day”, because like us their family/parents are no longer with us or too far to make the dinner commute.

We’ll have about 10 people over for dinner and a few more that will drop by I am sure during the day.

I have ordered my turkey from Whole food this year and went for the full organic 16 lb. bird. The reason why I got it there is because I wanted a fresh-non-frozen one. I picked it up yesterday and I am happy to tell you that my turkey is taking a bath and will be doing so until Thursday.

I would have added more pictures of this process but it looks more like a CSI show than a cooking interest.

Basically, get a brining bag (you can find them pretty much everywhere now) and put your turkey in there add 1/2 cup of Salt, 1 cup of sugar, a table spoon of pepper corn, same of juniper berries, a good pinch of chili flakes, some thyme, rosemary, 4 cloves of crushed Garlic, 2 bay leaves and cover everything with water, the turkey should be entirely submerged. Put everything in your roasting pan (to prevent leaking, you never know!!!!) and then let the bird suck up the juices for a few days. I swear you will never serve a better turkey to your family and friends.

If you want to add more ingredients in the brine, go ahead, this is an example of what I do, but feel free to improvise!

Note: I do the same thing to my chickens and pork chops. You should see people’s face when they eat a juicy pork chop!! It’s so worth the trouble of brining them. I would recommend at least 1 day, no more than 3.