5 hours ago, Duvel said:A multilevel question, touching some very fundamental issues.
If you place a of meat into a watery liquid, it will undergo an equilibrium process. The cells in the tissue will slowly equilibrate their sodium chloride (and others) concentration with the surrounding aqueous solution in a passive way. Increasing the temperature will facilitate/speed up the process (as does physical damage to the cells). Along with the flux of water other (flavor relevant) compounds tag along, especially when cell integrity is impaired. You can call this process leaching.
If you braise your meat in a salted stock, chances are that the flux of water goes from the piece from the meat towards the surrounding liquid. If you braise your meat in water, flux will be directed into the meat, leading to a dilution of flavor and possibly leaching of cellular liquid into the surrounding stock. You are not interested in either.
I understand salt can travel through the meat, but this article shows that marinating meat only penetrates the meat a few millimeters.
They did a taste test with chicken that was marinated vs non marinated. They cut off a few millimeters on the surface of the cooked marinated chicken, and the panel could not tell the difference in taste between the marinated cooked chicken and non marinated cooked chicken!
This is why I'm taking it one step further and thinking that braising in stock vs braising in water will make no difference as long as you pour sauce on the meat after its cooked.
