Dave the Cook

Thank you. The brine will work either way. For dishes where the shrimps will end up peeled anyway, I peel first because the brine is sticky, but that's just my preference. You might try broiling brined shrimps, shell-on for peel 'n' eat festvities. It's a nice, slightly smoky variation, and the combination of shell and brine gives the shrimps enough protection to withstand the high direct heat. By the way, I got that ham comment, too.

As I understand it, koshering is not brining. It's a three-step process: soak in cool water, remove and salt (as in: cover it completely), soak again. So it's not really the same situation. Does koshering or brining "draw out blood"? Not in the clinical sense. Organs aside, meat is muscle, and the muscle of a healthy animal does not harbor blood (the "helathy" part is handled in the inspection that follows butchering). The red stuff that is commonly thought to be blood in meat is myoglobin; actual blood is hemoglobin. No doubt some myoglobin is drawn off in both proceses. The evidence is the pink cast that characterizes a used brine. But not all of it -- diffusion makes that impossible. I don't want to make this a debate about kasruth, a discussion for which I am educationally and religiously almost completely unarmed. But it seems to me that Jewish dietary law has its roots in food safety. In particular, koshering meat seems to be about protecting the exposed surfaces of butchered meat, and about segregating potentially dangerous substances like blood from wholesome edibles. The idea that it is about surfaces is supported by the alternative treatment for some cuts: you can broil it. In fact, this is the only way that organ meats may be prepared; salting is considered inadequate. This is why steaks, for instance do not need the soak/salt/soak treatment -- because they are destined for the open flame. Perfectly kosher. Or kasher? As far as I can determine, salt the itself is irrelevant to dietary law, as a consumable. Remember that all the salt is to be washed off in the third step of koshering. It's named for its use, not its provenance. In any case, I think perhaps salt is by definition kosher? Every salt container I can find says it's kosher. Yes.

I won't dispute that a combination of acid and salt can have a significant effect on meat. But I think we should get things in perspective. Ceviche uses undiluted citrus (usually lime, or a mixture of lime and lemon) juice. The acid content of lemon juice varies; it is in the range of 3.7 to 8.4% citric acid. Let's take 5% as an average value. (I couldn't track down the acid content of limes, but they are weaker than lemons, and oranges, even sour oranges, are weaker still.) One half-cup of lemon juice (using the quantity fifi supplied, but substituting the known strength of lemon juice for the unknown but weaker strength of sour orange) in one gallon of water dilutes the citric acid concentration to 0.15%. It's certainly true that very small quantities of ingredients can make a huge difference in qualitative results (just add a teaspoon of dish detergent to your gallon of brine if your don't believe me), but 0.15% citric acid is 1/30th the strength of a ceviche recipe. The comparison to actual pickling stretches it more, since pickling solutions are usually about 5% acetic acid, which is much more powerful than citric acid, and uses a more concentrated brine to boot. Now, having said all that, I think the Colonel's idea for saucing is great. I'd bump the sour orange in your brine to 1 cup and do the sauce, too. I also think you should borrow that pH meter and let us know what the values pre- and post-OJ are. One last thing: I don't know a whole lot about organic chemistry, but I know that pH is not nearly the whole story on acid/base strength. We should be careful to draw too many conclusions without additional information.

Chicken powder

I wouldn't, I was just wondering. Besides now (after you get back to us with the results of course) we would know how much salt is required to float an egg FM You're right, it's important.

Aw, hell. I was afraid someone would bring up the egg. Now I'm going have to try it and see how much salt is required. I'll let you know. But I refer you to the third point in my list. Why would you want to float an egg when you can just measure and go?

That is one beautiful turkey, FoodMan.

Thank you. I think the potato thing is charming, and I think it would work, for the most part. But it's hardly the sort of thing you can expect a Smug Scientific Bastard (SSB) to approve: A lot would depend on the type of potato. Setting aside individual potato-to-potato (p2p) variation, there are big differences in moisture content between, say, a Russet and a Yukon Gold. This water content would be the prime determinant in the quantity of salt required to enable tuber buoyancy. You would have to contend with both original water content, and differing rates of absorption. It's hardly repeatable, due to p2p variation cited above. Repeatability is essential for SSB endorsement. SSBs don't believe in guesswork when a measuring device (especially if it's electronic) can obviate it. Weigh your salt, measure your water. Save the rustic notions for garnishing your perfectly seasoned protein.

Why don't you do that any more? Prefer to smother 'em in onions? Most of the leaner cuts of pig these days are awful, unless you're willing to pay premium princes (actually I'm more willing than able). Pork chops have my heart broken one too many times. I'm sorry (snif), I just can't talk about it any more . . . I know what you mean. If they're cheap pork chops, I really only like them thin cut and smothered (in either onions, mushrooms or both). I brown them off over really high heat, then put them aside as I deglaze and make the onions and/or mushrooms. When that's ready, I put the pork chops back in just long enough to heat them through. Seems to keep them tender and moist. For a real pork chop experience, I am lucky enough to have an old-fashioned full-service butcher nearby. When I want double cut pork chops, he pulls a whole fat-covered bone-in loin of pork out of the walk-in and asks how I want 'em. Not cheap, but certainly not expensive (although obviously I'm talking relative to NYC prices here). I usually brine these for around 2-3 hours before pan searing and finishing in the oven. They've never let me down even once. Nothing like it next to some cheddar cheese grits and sauteed bitter greens dressed with hot pepper vinegar. Butcher? What's a butcher? I do the smothering thing when I can't stand the loneliness anymore, but these are not the chops of my youth. I do have high hopes for a carneceria that's opened around the corner, and Jason has suggested trying Chinese shops for pork. I might try this, as there is a serious Asian shopping district in Northeast Atlanta.

I've gotten the same sense when I've slipped chili oil or an herb paste under the skin of a brined chicken. All I can think is that somehow the brining is opening up the surface of the flesh somehow. I can't think of a way to prove or disprove our observations, though.

Yup, that's brining. One thing I learned from Alton Brown that speeds things up (I used the same technique in the lesson) is to cut the water in half (you'll still have plenty to dissolve the salt and sugar). Then let the brine cool just a bit and add the other half as ice-water.

Can you provide a link, or more information? I'm not certain that this meets the definiton of brining. As the delegated SSB for this lesson, I think it's crucial that we not use brining and marinating as if they were interchageable. They're not. This is not to deny that it's very good, of course. In fact, it sounds terrific.

Why don't you do that any more? Prefer to smother 'em in onions? Most of the leaner cuts of pig these days are awful, unless you're willing to pay premium princes (actually I'm more willing than able). Pork chops have my heart broken one too many times. I'm sorry (snif), I just can't talk about it any more . . .

I'm sorry, this should have been in the lesson, so thanks for asking. It depends on how you're cooking the meat. With one exception (see below), I always rinse the meat to get rid of surface salt, etc., and pat it dry. Then you're ready to go, or use the following optional treatments (none of them are necessities): In addition: for whole turkey, I set it breast side up on a rack over a half-sheet pan, uncovered, and let the skin dry out for four to six hours. I'll do the same for whole/spatchcocked chicken (also duck and game hens), unless I'm going to subject the skin to hight heat anyway, as in Eddie's technique, or in my preference, which is basically Eddie's technique done on a grill. Also, if I'm pan-frying or broiling parts, I don't bother with the refrigerator drying. If I'm going to do Southern fried chicken, I go one of two routes: I either give it another bath, this time in low-fat buttermilk; or I leave the chicken parts brine-wet and dredge them in flour. The moisture helps the flour adhere to the skin. I suppose if I pan fried breaded/flour pork chops anymore, I'd treat them the same way.

I've never tried this. Please get Perdue to send me one of those machines. Seriously, these sound like a vacuum-enhanced version of how brining is carried on at an industrial scale. I'm not clear on the physics of how the vacuum affects osmosis and diffusion, though. Do you have, or do you have a source for, more information? And is what Jason's talking about the same thing? Edit: this vacuum stuff reminds me of a talk I had with Sandor Zombori (more about him here). He was experimenting with post-heat brining. He would sear a rack of lamb, then drop it in a vacuum pouch with a sort of vinaigrette (EVOO, lemon juice, water, salt, herbs and spices. He'd draw a vacuum and let it sit for a day, then finish to order on the grill. Again, the science is somewhat inscrutable, but I can't argue with the results -- it was one of the best lamb dishes I've ever had. The evidence that he had successfully seasoned throughout the meat was that lamb done to 130 F was brown throughout, rather than pink inside. He complained that people sent it back as overdone simply on the basis of how the cut meat looked.

Well, between you, me and the Colonel, we've really answered tommy's question! How about posting a recipe for one of your brines? I'm curious as to how much "really" strong is. I agree with the Pigment Corollary, and I think this sort of "fracturing" of solubles happens a lot. To bring molasses up again, I think the simpler sugars get through the cell walls. But molasses is a combination of many sugars, some of them quite complex. It's these more complex sugars that give molasses its charateristic color and flavor, yet very little of this flavor ends up in the meat.

In my experience, it does. It makes some sense, plus I trust Sam on this one. However, I dislike the taste of the sugar in the chicken meat itself -- it makes the thighs taste like this lunch meat my Mom used to buy called honey loaf, which I think was made by molding ham scraps, sugar, salt and gelatin to make a slicable "sausage." Besides, there are other ways to get crisp skin.

Brining works with dry-heat cooking, regardless of duration. In fact, it gives you a weapon to counteract the drying effects of long, low cooking -- it will be sort of an internal mop -- and will give you a wider window of doneness. For backup, I'll cite the many smokers on eGullet who swear by brining for pork butt (often cooked for close to 18 hours); and the fact that commercial, non-country-style hams are usually brined before being smoked for many hours -- somtimes days. Clean out the bathtub and brine that sucker.

I believe that water-soluble flavor components of relatively small molecular size do flavor the interior of the meat. That's as unequivocal as I'm willing to get until our Amazon commissions become sufficient to purchase an electron microscope. It's tricky. For instance, table sugar (sucrose) clearly works. But I don't think molasses does, at least not to the extent that sucrose does, therefore I'm no longer convinced that it makes much difference whether you use brown sugar or white sugar. I think if you boil garlic cloves to make a sort of tea, you get the tiniest bit of flavoring, but I don't think it's worth the trouble -- and like molasses/brown sugar, you're not getting the whole flavor of it, you're only getting the water-soluble/small molecule parts of it. The same goes for oily herbs like bay, rosemary, basil and sage. I do think marinating goes on that affects the outer 1/8 to 1/4 inch of the meat, and the more complex flavorings make a difference there.

Thank you. I brine shrimp for no longer than 30 minutes, maximum, even when I'm just going to boil them. I've never poached them in olive oil, so I have no experience to guide me. I can't see that you have much to lose, but I don't know how oil-poaching benefits the shrimp (I'm not being a smartass here, I really don't know.) I'd suggest you either 1) try it and let us know what you think; 2) explain what oil-poaching does, and maybe we can make some guesses about brining.

No one believed me when I tried to convince them that it simply wasn't ripe yet. The thing is, once the skin was removed, you couldn't tell. I sliced it into cutlets and served it with mushrooms and a reduction of stock and Marsala wine. And spinach noodles.

Poultry and pork producers ue two methods for restoring succulence to meats: brining and injecting. The former is much more common than the latter, which is usually employed only on turkeys (these are the "self-basting" types). There is no great difference between what is done at the processing plant and what you can do at home, although the vast differences in scale make for different specific techniques. There are three reasons why you would would do yourself what you won't allow others to do for you: 1) There is no good reason to pay meat prices for saltwater. 2) If you're doing it yourself, you have much more control over the end result. You can vary the brining time, the brine concentration and the brine additives. For instance, the other night I brined a chicken, which I subsequently fried. In addition to salt, I added lemon juice and vinegar-based pepper sauce, giving it some tang and heat in addition to the basic seasoning. Had I bought a commercially brined bird, I would have been limited to surface application of these seasonings. 3) Once meat is removed from the brine, a clock starts ticking. Without the supporting pressure of immersion, liquid will start to leak out of the meat. Of course, all meat leaks to some extent, but brined items, after several days in the meat case, end up wading in deep puddles of pink.

Well, if you've got three hundred bucks (probably less than what I've spent on a variety of lesser devices over the last couple of years), there's the Fluke 54, which I think MatthewB suggested a few months ago. It does over and under, can accomodate two sensors (contact, probe or a combination), and comes with PC software for analysis. And I really want one of these to measure grate, pan surface and charcoal fire temps.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Collagen begins breaking down at 140 F, and is fully under way at 160 F. Assuming this temperature is maintained, complete collagen conversion is simply a matter of time -- the question is how much. As has been pointed out in several of the smoking threads, there is no target temperature for this type of cooking, since by the standard temperature guidelines, the meat is "done" just about the time the collagen is breaking down. Rather, doneness is ascertained by feel: the looseness of the bone indicates fairly complete conversion. But fifi makes a great point: Inspired by this thread (and by 69-cents-a-pound pork shoulder), I put an eight-pound butt in a 225 F oven at 10 p.m. last night. At 8:00 this morning, it was at 164. At 9:00, it was at 165. At 3:00 this afternoon, it was 175. When I got home at 7:10, it was 186. I don't know for sure when it started or ended, but I think an 11 degree rise over seven hours indicates a stall. And my thinking is that, once this stall is over and the temperature starts climbing again, it's time to pull the butt -- any further heating will only further dry out the muscle proteins. What do you think, fifi? Now I wish I had made a temp-reading table at 15- or 30-minute intervals. Just for the record, and to complete a hat trick of smug scientific bastardism, the effects of food poisoning don't usually show up until 24 to 48 hours after ingestion of the dastardly bug. So you're just entering the prime observation period, Lily.

It's all over the place, which is not to say that it's easy to find. So it'll be here, too, as well as in tomorrow's Brining Unit in the eGCI (please forgive the shameless plug). By volume: 1 part table salt = 1.5 parts Morton's kosher = 2 parts Diamond Crystal kosher. This works at least up to a few cups. I'm not sure I'd trust it any further, and ceratinly not for baking. By weight: 1 part table salt = 1 part Morton's kosher = 1 part Diamond Crystal kosher I would not venture to guess volume equivalents for any sort of designer salt (particle sizes and shapes vary a lot from brand to brand), nor would I recommend them for anything other than finishing, anyway. In any case, going by weight is your best bet.