Dave the Cook

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.

I find that covering the pan helps. You never get them evenly browned, but keeping the hot air close to the sausage helps. It won't work in conjunction with guajolote's suggestion (a technique which I've nevertheless found useful), because of the moisture released by the vegetables.

Yes. Once the surface temperature hits 137, trichinosis (the worst of the potential nasties) is killed. By 160, pretty much everything else is, too. Assuming your butt was at room temperature to begin with, all of this will happen well within the first 60 minutes at an oven temperature of 225. I'm with HB and G as to the thinking behind this. But I'm pretty sure the moisture shed by the meat over the following 23 hours will soften any crunch. It would make more sense to cook it slow at first, then drain any accumulated fat, and raise the temp at the end. Edit to add: trichinosis is vanishingly rare in commercially available pork; no cases have been reported in at least ten years. If you were slow-cooking bear butt, perhaps I'd be more cautious.

The latter, I think. Nigella is not known for her butt.

Lots of choices here. D'Artagnan products are carried at a number of NY venues, though I don't know if venison is common among them. You could have it sent next-day delivery (I gather cost is the least of your problems) and have it in time. Or, D'Artagnan is in Newark -- not so far away for you, maybe.

There are far worse last meals, Lily. You should be fine. The fact that the roast was only down to 100 menas that the oven hadn't been off all night. You'll have several hours above 140 to kill any bugs (and it's unlikely there were any there to begin with; I'd be much more concerned if you were doing a 24-hour meatloaf). Your final temp is going to be in the 200 - 205 range, where very little survives, save the succulence of your shoulder. But this 550 thing? What's the point of it?

The common description (even on authentic restaurant menus) is "Greek lasagne," and it's pretty apt. Sounds great, G. How did it go over?

Thanks for the update on this landmark, fifi. Brenner's is one of my fondest food memories of Houston. (And the "tourists at all costs/Fertitta memorial" homogenization of Kemah -- especially TFD, which was the best of the lot -- is one of the saddest.)

Sad, isn't it? I have it on good authority that she's never had grits, either. We're gonna fix this when she gets to North Carolina in October.