Thankful for Dry Brine

I normally don't post anything really food-related on this blog that isn't somehow used as an art project first, but I have been meaning to share this.  A few years ago I was asked by a friend to cook the turkey for our upcoming Thanksgiving dinner.  My first go-around turned out okay, but ever since then I have been searching for the recipe for a perfect turkey.

In recent years I started looking into the process of brining the turkey before cooking.  However, brining in itself can be a messy process since it includes immersing a large, dead piece of poultry in a salty solution for a long period of time.  An alternative solution I learned about was dry-brining, which gives the same benefits without the mess.

Over the past year I have been experimenting with dry-brining poultry and have come across a combination that seems to work fairly well.  It leaves the turkey moist, tender, and with just the right amount of salt and herb taste to it.  Here is my typical recipe that I follow for a 16 pound turkey:

Ingredients:

• 3 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon thyme
• 1 onion
• 1 orange
• 4-6 bay leaves
• 1 cup butter (2 sticks)
• Black pepper
• Rosemary

Supplies and equipment:

• 2.5 gallon storage bag
• Roasting pan & rack
• Aluminum foil

Preparation:

I hope the turkey is thawed when you try this, otherwise you'll have a hard time.  Typically you want to do your brining for three days.  You can do this in two days in a pinch, but the longer it stays in, the better the effects.  Three days before your dinner, lay the turkey out on a cookie sheet (or another type of container that will contain any spills).  In a small bowl mix together 3 1/2 tablespoons of kosher salt and 1 tablespoon of thyme.  You can remove the giblets and place them aside if you're going to be using them.  Pat the turkey down with paper towels to remove any excess moisture.  Rub the salt and thyme mixture on the outside and interior cavity, focusing on the breasts and thighs.

You will then need to place the salted turkey into the 2.5 gallon storage bag.  (Place the giblets in as well if you are going to use them.)  Place the turkey in the refrigerator, breast side up.  Every 12 hours, massage the breast and thighs of the turkey through the bag, then alternate between breast side up and breast side down.

At least 8 hours before you need to start cooking the turkey, take it out of the bag and place it on a platter or cookie sheet in the fridge.  Pat it down to remove any excess moisture.

One hour before cooking remove the turkey from the fridge and place at room temperature.  Slice the onion and orange into quarters and set aside.  Remove the butter from the fridge to soften up and slice into 1 tablespoon sized segments.

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.  Here's where things can get a bit tricky, but with a careful hand, you can make it work.  Carefully separate the skin from the breast and thighs of the turkey, taking care not to tear the skin.  Place the pads of butter under the skin and inside the inner cavity.  Season beneath the skin with salt, pepper, rosemary, and bay leaves.  Stuff quartered onion and orange into inner cavity.

Place turkey in a roasting pan on top of a roasting rack (I find that if I don't elevate it from the bottom of the pan, it tends to fall apart while cooking... not ideal)When cooking your turkey, follow the standard guidelines for cooking length.  I typically cook mine at 500 degrees for the first 30 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 325 for the remainder of the cooking time.  If the skin around the breast starts to look too brown the last hour, I place a light foil tent over it to shield it from the direct heat.

Once your turkey is done cooking, remove it from the oven and let it sit for 30 minutes lightly tented in aluminum foil.  After that, have at it!  I hope it turns out good.  This method hasn't ever let me down for creating moist, tender, savory turkey that all can enjoy.

One thing to note is that because of the salt-brining, the drippings might be too salty to be used in any gravy.  That is one drawback to this method, but you can always find alternative methods to cook gravy.

Cucurbita Maxima 2013

I have to admit that having two children under the age of 2 sort of drains my desire to do fanciful holiday crafts.  However, I've set the bar too high for myself, I suppose.  Anyway, this year I decided to do a rendition of Robert Downey Jr. ala Iron Man 3.  I recently got to see the movie for the first time (the reason: two kids under the age of 2) and really enjoyed it.  Actually, I really like all the Iron Man films, so I think this is a fitting tribute.

 The time waster

The time waste-ee

I had to put in a shot of my daughter's pumpkin

Click here for my comprehensive guide on how to do one of these. I think next year I might try carving one of these out with a rotary tool.  No joke.  I would love to know how to make these go faster.

Mark 3 Suit - Grunging it Up

Even though NASA might be shutdown, that doesn't mean that I have to stop working (yet... but that's another story).  In the mean time, I am at home doing some work.  I finally got the chance to take the Mark 3 suit into ZBrush to do some fine detailing:

After I got to putting back in the seams and wrinkles that didn't show up from the laser scan, I went back and created some grunge maps with added dirt and yellowing of the material. I even programmed in some controls for the rig so you could determine the level of dirt and weathering of the suit to fit whatever needs you had.

Now to test it out in an animation.  The rigging on this uses Modo's full body IK system, which doesn't always work out for the best.

Let's hope this shutdown doesn't last too much longer.

NASA: Asteroid Redirect Manned Mission

So for the past few months I have been working hard with the concept analysis team here at NASA JSC, helping them visualize the recently announced asteroid redirect and utilization mission.  It has been quite the brain-opening experience, learning about all that goes into planning a mission of this caliber.

One of the main things that we have been hard at work at here is an animation representing the manned portion of the mission, which is what the JSC team has been focusing on.  This animation was presented at a mission formulation review up at NASA headquarters:

It was very well received, which was good news for us.  We spent a lot of time this go-around making things look realistic and getting everything we could technically accurate.  (We had gotten a lot operationally wrong the first time we did an animation of this mission).

If you're wondering what I personally did in the video, it was pretty much the part from when the two spaceships dock to when they separate.  All of the modeling and animation was done in Modo while we did the compositing. To save render time on some of the less complicated vehicle shots, we wound up using Video CoPilot's Element 3D plugin for After Effects.  It took a lot to set up, especially since it doesn't cast shadows, but we wound up getting it in the end.  We also got to do our own J.J. Abrams-style lens flares for it, which was a nice touch in the end.  We used SonicFire Pro for mixing together the music, which helped out a bunch in the long haul.  It's a handy piece of software that anyone who regularly does videos needs to pick up.

Overall, I am pleased with the results.  It's a good blend of artistic interpretation with real engineering planning behind it.  Here are a few more still images that I created that were used in the review:

AMA Declassified: Mark 3 Surface Suit

Here's another peek into my work.  We recently got connected to the group here at NASA JSC who are working on the Mark 3 surface suit.  We showed them a few things that we could do and they were interested in how that could apply to their work. 

As a bit of a test run, they gave us a 3D laser-scan of the Mark 3 surface suit.  We quickly did a quick texturing and rendering of the raw file, which was well into the millions of polygons.

I am in the process of creating a low-resolution version of the suit, after which I'll project all the details of the high-resolution into a normal map.  It should be a good asset to have, once I finish it.  It certainly will be hard to create a usable rig for the legs, though, looking at the joints in the hips.  I'm still scratching my head about how to tackle that one.

ZBrush - Lunar Surface

I have been meaning to do a lunar surface ZBrush sculpt for work, and I finally got some time to work at home today.  This was knocked out in about three hours.  If I was doing it right, I would have split up the UV map into four or more tiles, but as it currently sits, the final texture maps were around 8192x8192 pixels.

ZBrush 4R6: ZRemesher

I haven't had much free time lately to do 3D stuff on my own at home, but I really wanted to try out a new feature in ZBrush.  The latest release included a tool they have been developing called "ZRemesher."  It essentially uses complex algorithms to analyze the surfaces of your sculpts to create a base mesh that works with the curves.  With the addition of this tool, it makes sculpting that much easier.

I did the above old man in about two hours in ZBrush.  It started off as a Dynamesh sphere where I got it to the proper size.  After that, I drew some curves on the surface to suggest how the polygon flow should be generated, then let ZRemesher do its magic.  I can't complain:

This truly solidifies ZBrush in my mind as a great development tool.  It's great to worry about technical details later and just focus on the creative at first.

AMA Studios: NASA Asteroid Retrieval & Utilization Mission

Something I finally worked on at my job here with NASA got announced to the public, so I can finally talk about it.

For the past three months, I have been working with a team here that is putting together the manned space flight portion of a mission to capture and study an asteroid.  We have been instrumental in helping the team both visualize and communicate their ideas to the rest of the NASA centers.  It is interesting to see how different concepts come together and how different ideas start to form actual missions.

There are a number of inaccuracies with this video, partially due to time constraints, and partially due to us having to fill a hole we see in the animation.  (You should see the stuff we had to cut out!)  However, the idea is there about what NASA has been charged to do.  Now we get to see if Congress approves the budget suggestion given by the administration.

All in all, this has been a very rewarding project and a lot of fun.  When I have more time, I'll go into more depth on what I did specifically that helped speed along the process.  In short, any shot you see that has a crewman or spacesuit in it is one that I either animated or did some compositing work on.

A Weekend Sculpt: Alien Bust

I had a "free" weekend and decided to spend part of it doing some sculpting in ZBrush.  I have been fascinated with this particular alien head shape and decided to do a little bust sculpting.  The tools in the latest version of ZBrush have been particularly useful in helping the artist with getting the topology to work for them.  Dynamesh along with qRemesher were both helpful in making sure that the topology didn't get too squirrely.

Since I haven't been too impressed with ZBrush's rendering capabilities, I used the Decimation Master plugin to export a lower-res version of the bust out.  Shading, lighting, and rendering were all done in Cinema 4D with some post-processing done in Photoshop.  All in all, this was a fun little practice session.

AMA Unclassified, Part 2: Z1 Spacesuit

I wanted to share one more thing that I've been working on that isn't in the SBU (sensitive but unclassified) realm.  One of the things that we haven't had good access to in the past at our company is actual spacesuits to get texture and reference photography from for our 3D models.  Recently we got to go see a pressure test of the Z1 spacesuit, which we wanted for our library of models.

This character was created and rigged in Modo with the textures done in Photoshop.  Hopefully one day I'll be able to take it into ZBrush and do some real sculpting to it, rather than faking it in Photoshop.

This and other fun perks are a few of the reasons why I am enjoying this job immensely.

All images created by AMA Studios/Advanced Concept Lab JSC