The rub – indeed. I’ll rub instead of brine. All the TV and cookbook chefs insist you simply must brine, and a quick blog search suggests a lot of home cooks are doing the same, like this one, this one, and this mother of — are you ready?? — 12.

I did brine the turkey one year, but it didn’t really seem all that much better than the army of unbrined birds I’d cooked in years past, and it was a bit too salty for my taste. And yes, I followed the instructions exactly as to the ratio of salt to water. So I’m going to thumb my nose at all those epicurean experts and cook the bird the way my grandma always did in the days before anybody’d heard of bird-brining. Given a choice between perfect turkey and perfect gravy, I’ll choose perfect gravy. My kids are mad for gravy, and for them, everything else is something to pour gravy over.

This lady is having a “Turk-off” with her husband, cooking hers unbrined while he cooks his brined, and then seeing whose is better. I’ll be checking back to see the results.