Q&A -- Brining

[peanutgirl]

I have a question on brine ingredients... specifically the addition of soy sauce. What proportion to water, and would the salt still be necessary?

I've brined a few chickens, turkey wings and pork shoulders with success but had this idea ( Ok, it was a dream. I dream of smoking ever since we bought our WSM a few months ago!) to try a honey/ soy flavored brine. Can anyone give me a starting point, so I can fool around with it? I was thinking a cup each of honey & soy to a gallon of water. Any opinions would be appreciated as I plan on smoking some chicken on New Year's Day.

[Allura]

Bit of thread resurrection here, but it seems the appropriate place to ask:

I'm trying to determine how much sodum actually ends up in the meat, particularly for someone on a low-salt diet. My father is now limited in his salt intake, so I'm wondering if brining is acceptable for his diet? Generally, he tries to keep it down to 200mg per serving (2000mg / day is his limit, and he tries to eat much less), although a bit more is acceptable at dinner, his main meal.

Thanks for any help.

[Chris Amirault]

I've been using a brine technique for a while that I think greatly speeds up the time between starting a brine and brining the meat. Well, to be honest, it's a cocktail technique. [ETA: it's also mentioned in the brining course -- should have read that more carefully before posting! -- CA]

1. Measure out your salt, sugar, and any other components you want to have in the brine, and note how much water you'll need.

2. Heat about 10-20% of the water (a quart or so for me usually) of water -- I usually just use the hottest water I can get out of the tap -- and add the brine ingredients to the water. Stir until they've dissolved.

3. The cocktail step: add a bunch of ice to the concentrated brine and stir it to cool it immediately. Measure to see how much water you've now got (some of it frozen, all of it cold).

4. Add whatever additional cold water has to go into the brine for the proper ratios (along with more ice if you want).

Edited April 12, 2008 by chrisamirault (log)

[qrn]

If you use "canning and pickling" salt, and "ultrafine bakers" sugar,(both very fine), you don't need to do any heating. They will dissolve nicely, in cold tap water...

Bud

[Peter the eater]

This is very good stuff -- it's so nice to to have these online resources.

I've got an inexpensive polycarbonate plastic marinator that features a big plunger with an o-ring for a lid so I can reduce the volume/increase the pressure within the chamber. It seems to drive the soy sauce into the fork-perforated chicken breast well enough, but now I'm thinking it might enhance the cold brining experience.

If I use this gizmo to brine a small piece of pork belly in my fridge for a few days -- under pressure -- will I get better results/shorter time required?

[RobertCollins]

I saw a recipe for brine that, instead of measuring / weighing the salt said to add as much as it took for a potato to float in it. What are your thoughts on that? too much?

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:

[Peter the eater]

This is very good stuff -- it's so nice to to have these online resources.

I've got an inexpensive polycarbonate plastic marinator that features a big plunger with an o-ring for a lid so I can reduce the volume/increase the pressure within the chamber. It seems to drive the soy sauce into the fork-perforated chicken breast well enough, but now I'm thinking it might enhance the cold brining experience.

If I use this gizmo to brine a small piece of pork belly in my fridge for a few days -- under pressure -- will I get better results/shorter time required?

←

Correction -- now that I've actually used the marinator a second time, I should clarify that the plunger is pulled UP to REDUCE the pressure inside. The meat "opens up" a bit and the marinade or brine rushes in.

[Recoil Rob]

I'm a fan of brining, had great success last week brininh striped bass filets. they were about 1" thick and I brined for about 75 minutes then let rest for a day. It grilled up perfectly, moist and held the brine's flavoring well (mostly herbs).

[agray]

Just made the Pork Tenderloin recipe from Thomas Keller's 'Ad-hoc at Home' and I had a brining query. He uses a 1 cup kosher salt to 8 cups water ratio, plus all sorts of aromatics, and suggests a 4 hour brining time. I only had time for 2 1/2 hours and although my wife thought it was excellent, I found it a bit too salty for my taste.

So, to reduce the saltiness, is it better to reduce the salt to water ratio and give it the standard length brining or keep the ratio the same and reduce the time? I presume there's some chemistry at work here otherwise you could have super short brining time with a higher ratio...

[JAZ]

One thing to consider is that not all kosher salt measures the same. Does the recipe specify a brand? Morton's is significantly heavier than Diamond Crystal, for instance -- if you're using Morton's, you'd want to reduce the salt to 3/4 cup to equal the weight of one cup of Daimond. (I'm surprised that Keller doesn't provide a weight for the salt.)

[Dave the Cook]

(I'm surprised that Keller doesn't provide a weight for the salt.)

He does: 5 ounces to two quarts of water -- and he recommends Diamond Crystal. This is a pretty standard formula (it's what I use). agray, I'd try Keller's recipe again if you used Morton's -- just weigh it or follow Janet's measurement.

But to answer the question as to time or salt concentration, you should adjust concentration. Brine penetration is a constant, so if you want evenly seasoned meat, you have to give it enough time, regardless of how much salt you're using.

There's more information in the eGCI course.

[velveeta]

You did rinse it thouroughly after brining, right?

Was the pork already injected and treated with saline before you brined it?

One last idea, you can use part salt and part sugar in brines for pork and poultry.

[agray]

Thanks for the quick and very helpful responses. I'm such a newbie - I didn't weigh the salt, as you suspected JAZ. I just checked now, and Keller does indeed note that a cup of Diamond Crystal is 5 oz. I weighed our Kosher salt (Windsor brand - I'm not sure how easy Diamond Crystal is to get in Canada) and a cup is 7.6 oz. So there you go.

Thanks also for the suggestions, Velveeta - it was not treated with saline already, though it's very useful to keep that in mind. Keller's recipe does have some honey in it, though maybe not as much as other brines, and I did rinse it, though I'll be careful to be thorough next time.

And Dave, thanks so much for the link. I'm still learning my way around here - I'd no idea the eGCI course was there; what a marvellous resource it is. Next time I'll put in 4-5 oz and aim for a 3-4 hour brining.

[Dave the Cook]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but sweetening is added to offset the salt from a taste perspective. When it comes to the chemistry of brining, sugar plays no part.

[Shalmanese]

Cup measures always seemed dumb to me for brines. Here's how I do it: I put the meat in the container I'm brining it in and then, using a 1 litre measure (metric makes this significantly simpler), I pour water on it until it's wholly submerged, keeping track of how much water is used. I then measure out salt as a percentage by weight of the water. 3% for a medium brine, 2% for a light brine, 4% for an aggressive brine. If you're using non-metric, for every 4 cups of water, adding an ounce of salt leads to approximately a 3% brine.

I usually also like to add brown sugar at somewhere between 50 - 100% of the weight of the salt. Take the meat out, dump in the sugar/salt, stir until dissolved (even in ice water, a 3% brine has no problems dissolving with 30 seconds of stirring), then add the meat back in.

Depending on the shape of the brining vessel & the shape of the meat, the volume of brine can vary drastically. Apart from cookbook authors fearing their readers are bad at math, I don't know why this isn't the standard brining technique.

[agray]

Keller's ratio looks to be about 2.5 times higher than yours, Shalmanese - 5 oz per 8 cups water. And I used 50% more than this, getting close to 4 times your medium brine! No wonder it was salty. Live and learn...

Oh, and the title of this thread should be TK pork tenderloin. I blame iPhone autocorrect...

Edited November 23, 2009 by agray (log)

[howsmatt]

Can you brine and hold? For a few hours? A few days? Or will the salt start to adversely affect the meat?

[Shalmanese]

You can hold a 3% brine for as long as you would keep meat refrigerated. I would recommend bringing for at least 24 hours. For Keller's brine, holding for even an hour past the recommended will likely oversalt your meat.

[howsmatt]

Thanks, but I was really wondering if I can brine, take out of the water, seal sous-vide and leave on the shelf until used 2-8 days later.

[BistroPaul]

Dave The Cook- I've been wrong about things before but I'm fairly confident that the addition of sweeteners to the brine will increase the osmotic pressure of the brine and alter the rate of brine uptake. Because carbohydrates are not ionic compounds they won't change this as much as adding more salt would, but they will certainly have some effect.

Howsmatt- I can see no reason that wouldn't be fine, this is effectively what is done with the pre-marinated packages you can get at grocery stores. I would be cautious of going more than 2-3 days after repackaging because of possible bacterial contamination.

Paul

[howsmatt]

I thought about the pre packaged stuff but figure they also have preservatives. Is there a reason a saltier pork chop is likely to acquire bacteria more quickly than a plain pork chop?

[gfweb]

Salt is a bit antibacterial even in 3% concentrations, but not enough to think of it as a sterilizing measure. Many pathogens, esp Staph, have no problem with modest salinity.

[skinnye]

I have seen plenty of reasons to brine meats/poultry and have seen minimum times listed, but have never seen a maximum time.

I ask because I have duck legs and breasts being brined and didn't quite get to putting them in the sous vide this morning, so would it be good tomorrow? It would have been in the brine for 36 hrs tomorrow morning. Are there any safety issues? Are there any flavor issues?

[tim]

Hi,

Yes, there are flavor issues from excessive salt. Brining formula's do include maximum times depending on the salinity of the solution.

Tim

[Shalmanese]

There are two types of brines, ones which you brine to equilibrium and ones where you brine under equilibrium. A 3% salt solution allows you to keep meat in it indefinitely as the meat will never get more than 3% salt which is close to perfectly seasoned. Brines of 5% or more, while faster, require you to pull the meat after a certain point of the meat will become over salted.

Oddly enough, most cookbook authors seems to prefer higher percentage brines even though they're markedly less user friendly.

After 36 hours, here's a simple tip to figure out if your brine is ok: Take some of the brining liquid, boil it and then taste it. If it's nicely seasoned, your duck is fine. If it's unpleasantly salty, so will your duck. A possible solution to rescue the legs might be to do a traditional style confit as the oil will pull some of the salt out of the legs.