The salt also begins to dissolve proteins in the muscle, resulting in more tender meat. Of course another benefit of this is that as the salt penetrates the meat, it gets seasoned from the inside out, giving you a nice even seasoning throughout and not just on the exterior.
One would brine fish for the same reasons as above retaining moisture and even seasoning , but there are a few other reasons too.
A quick brine can firm up a flaky fish such as haddock or cod, helping it retain its shape — particularly when subject to high-temperature cooking methods such as barbecuing or smoking. It will also abolish the formation of albumin, that unpleasant white stuff which sometimes seeps out of fish especially salmon whilst cooking. You will often see brines described as a percentage e.
To determine how much brine you need, place the meat or fish in the container it will be brined in and cover it with water — it must be fully submerged. Weigh the amount of water then work out the percentage from there. Most brines range from five to ten percent.
A lower concentrate brine might be used for larger cuts such as a whole turkey, as this could take a couple of days to brine. Water with some other flavourings added such as spices and woody herbs is perfectly fine, but some like to switch out some of the water for things like stock, apple juice or beer.
If using a stock which already contains salt, you might want to reduce the amount of salt added. Whilst good for tenderizing meat, you would need to reduce brining time or mix with water to prevent a mushy finish. Many brines also contain sugar. This is mostly just for flavour, but also helps with getting a nice caramelisation on the meat when it comes to cooking. Try experimenting here; a brown sugar will give a nice rich caramelised flavour, but you could also use honey, treacle or maple syrup.
Making a brine gives you ample opportunity to get creative — all sorts of herbs and spices, fruit zests, vegetables such as onion, garlic and chilli or even seaweed and tea leaves can flavour brines in incredible ways. Take a look at our brine recipe collection for some of our favourite standalone brine recipes, as well as dishes which include brining in the method.
If you are in a hurry and have a chamber sealer to hand you can vacuum-pack the meat in a brine. This reduces the amount of brine you need weigh the meat, divide the number by half and use this much brine , saves on fridge space and reduces the brining time.
Use a five or six percent brine to prevent over-salting when vacuum-packing. The size of the meat or fish depends on how long you need to brine it for.
Single portions such as chicken breasts or pork chops only need a couple of hours. A whole chicken will usually take around twelve to twenty-four hours, a turkey up to forty-eight hours and a whole brisket for pastrami can take up to five days!
A brine is a salt solution, and traditional brining is done by soaking ingredients, predominantly meat or fish, in brine prior to cooking. This process is particularly beneficial for lean, relatively bland proteins like chicken, turkey, and mass-farmed pork which all have a tendency to dry out when exposed to high heat. This dehydration happens because muscle fibers contract when heated, which squeezes out moisture like wringing out a towel.
Brining helps mitigate this problem: Through the processes of osmosis and diffusion, salt and water from the brine are absorbed by the meat. Thanks to salt's ability to reshape and dissolve muscle proteins, the salt-loosened muscle fibers contract less while the salt-dissolved proteins form a gel that traps and holds onto water from the brine. So you brined your bird, cooked it, sliced into it, and marveled at its juicy texture while proudly plating up portions for your guests.
Then you take a bite, and another, and one more just to make sure you're not losing it, but it's inescapable that this succulent meat doesn't taste like much of anything.
That's because it's watered down. By brining your turkey in a traditional wet brine, you added water that it absorbed and held onto like a vodka-soaked watermelon, but instead of a boozy fruit snack, you have a waterlogged bird that tastes Ah, some people may say here. But if you flavor your brine with delicious things like fruit juices, stock, herbs, spices, sugar, and more, then surely your meat will be more delicious than if you just soaked it in a plain old salt-water solution.
Sorry, but nope! As Kenji has shown before in his article on turkey brining , flavor molecules, unlike salt, are for the most part too big to penetrate the cell membranes of a piece of meat; your brine may taste flavorful, but your roast will not. There's also a phenomenon called "salting out" that further decreases the chances those flavor molecules make it into the meat.
We are therefore not big fans of wet-brined meat for the same reason that we are proponents of buying air-chilled chickens : More water means more dilute flavor, while less water translates to more concentrated flavor.
Plus, all that extra water impedes browning, so your wet-brined roast will have a much harder time developing that wonderful brown crust and crispy poultry skin that makes a roast so good.
That doesn't mean wet brines are totally out. In some cases they're still a good choice, including fish that might benefit from a rinse if, say, it's still fresh but has juices that are borderline smelly or will be served raw some sushi chefs wet-brine some types of fish before cutting and serving ; fish that are going to be cold-smoked you want to form a sticky pellicle that a wet brine helps achieve ; some vegetables that salt doesn't adhere to well whole carrots, zucchini, and asparagus ; and fried chicken, where the wet brine helps form the eventual batter.
Dry-brining cuts out the unnecessary added water by using the natural moisture content of the meat to create a concentrated brine that, when given enough time, is naturally absorbed back into the meat before cooking. If you've ever made eggplant Parmesan or zucchini fritters, you know that salt draws out moisture from ingredients, and the same applies to proteins. Season a steak with kosher salt, and within a few minutes, you will witness osmosis at work: Liquid from the steak will bead up on the surface of the meat, drawn out by the salt.
Wait another ten minutes, and that liquid from the beef will have started to dissolve the salt, forming a concentrated brine. That concentrated liquid brine, formed from the meat's natural juices, is what makes this process "brining" and not just a ridiculous rebranding of mere salting.
That dissolved salt is then absorbed by the meat through diffusion, moving from an area of high concentration the surface of the steak to a lower concentration one the steak's interior. As with a traditional brine, the salt re-shapes and dissolves muscle proteins, allowing the meat to absorb and retain moisture.
To complete the dry-brining process, the moisture that was initially drawn out of the meat is reabsorbed to counteract the shift in salt concentration from surface to interior, leaving you with a well-seasoned piece of meat that will now better retain its natural moisture content during cooking. You're tricking your food into brining itself with its own juices, and all it takes is some salt and a little patience. Still unconvinced about the merits of dry-brining? Or do you need to state your case to a stubborn friend or family member who insists on splashing around with a salt-water-bathed turkey every year?
Here are the bullet points in favor of dry-brining. Traditional wet-brining is a logistical nightmare when you're working with something as big as a turkey. Who has giant food-safe buckets kicking around for plunging a bird into? Or the fridge space to keep the soaking turkey cold for a few days? And if you decide to brine in a giant cooler, do you really want to spend a good portion of a morning painstakingly sanitizing it once the brining is done so that you don't end up serving salmonella sodas at your next cookout?
Then there's the making of the brine itself. Having to whisk and whisk and whisk to dissolve a bunch of salt how much was it again?? Did I get that ratio right? With dry-brining, all you have to do is Salt Bae that sucker up on a wire rack—lined baking sheet , and pop it in the fridge. So much simpler. The wire rack, by the way, is important: You want air to circulate fully around the meat and not have it sitting in a puddle of its own juices.
Kenji has spent a lot of time on the brining subject and has written about how salt is really the only seasoning that achieves significant flavor penetration , whether you go with a dry or traditional brine method. As mentioned above, traditional brines chock-full of aromatics smell nice and all, but those flavors, beyond the salt in the solution, are not transmitted to the meat.
Simply sprinkling your food with salt and giving it time to do its work creates much more evenly and deeply seasoned meat than the surface-level flavor you get from salting right before cooking. As mentioned earlier, dry-brined meats and fish taste more of themselves than they do when wet-brined because they aren't holding onto extra water weight, which dilutes flavor.
Just as you wouldn't be thrilled about getting a bland, watered-down cocktail at a bar that touts the skills of its head "mixologist," you shouldn't serve people waterlogged turkey or chicken. Dry-brined meat and fish comes out perfectly juicy and firm after cooking. Given time, salt will perform its protein-dissolving magic, which allows meat to hold onto its natural moisture during cooking.
For soft-fleshed fish like mackerel, salting also helps firm up the meat, making it both easier to maneuver during cooking and more pleasant to eat. Along with producing juicier meat, dry-brining also helps achieve better surface browning, crunchier crust on steaks and beef roasts, and crispier poultry and pork skin.
Once the moisture that initially beaded up on the surface of the meat is drawn back in to balance the high salt concentration of the interior and also evaporates off it , the meat's surface is left much drier than ever before. And because the moisture in the meat isn't being squeezed out as much thanks to the proteins dissolving and muscle fibers relaxing, the surface of the meat stays drier during cooking.
Dry surfaces brown, wet ones don't. So when you blast a dry-brined piece of meat with heat, whether searing in a skillet or finishing in a hot oven, you achieve Maillard browning really fast, which means you're less likely to overcook your food in the quest for a mahogany crust. Any flavoring added to the brine will be carried into the meat with the saltwater mixture.
Because the meat is now loaded with extra moisture, it will stay that way as it cooks. The process of brining is easy but takes some planning. Depending on the size of what you want to brine it can take up to 24 hours or more. If you are going to be brining a whole bird , you will also want an additional 6 to 12 hours between the brining and the cooking. If you want your poultry to have a golden, crispy skin, it needs to sit in the refrigerator for several hours after you remove it from the brine so that the meat can absorb the moisture from the skin.
The most basic process of brining is to take approximately 1 cup of table salt no iodine or other additives to 1 gallon of water. Another way to measure this concentration is with a raw egg. The ideal brine has enough salt to float a raw egg. You will need enough brine to completely submerge the meat without any part being out of the liquid.
Some items might need to be weighed down to stay under. Brine meat for about an hour per pound. Remove from brine don't reuse the brine and rinse to remove any excess salt before cooking.
So what should you brine? Just about any meat you choose. Poultry in particular benefits greatly from brining, regardless of how you plan to cook it. Large roasts, racks of ribs and anything you plan to smoke will be better for having been brined first. The typical brine consists of 1 cup of salt for each gallon of water or other liquids.
Start by determining the amount of liquid you are going to need. To do this take the meat you plan to brine and place it in the container you are going to use.
The container can be almost anything that will easily fit the meat but isn't so big that you have to prepare far more brine that you need. Plastic containers, crocks, stainless steel bowls, resealable bags, or any non-corrosive material will work. Once you know how much liquid is needed start by boiling 2 cups of water for each cup of salt, you will need. Once it boils, add the salt and sugar if you are going to be using sugar and stir until dissolved.
Add other spices and herbs. Combine with the remaining liquid should be cold. The brine should always be cold before you add the meat so you should refrigerate it before you add the meat. You don't want the brine cooking the meat. At this point, you can add other brine ingredients like juices or cut up fruit. Submerge the meat into the brine. You can use a plate or other heavy object to keep it down.
It is important that no part of the meat be exposed to the air.
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