Brining

[mbhank]

I seem to have no end of trouble with brining. I follow the instructions exactly for the amount of Kosher salt, brown sugar, and water to use and when the dish is finished the food is so salty it is inedible.

Some recipes call for rinsing the meat after taking it out of the brine and others have you start working with it right out of brine. No matter how much I rinse it, the finished dish is still too salty.

Anyone else having the same problem? The only solution I can see is don't brine and just braise. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

[weinoo]

What kind of kosher salt are you using?

Try brining for half the time and see how that affects your end product.

[JAZ]

Mitch's question about the brand of kosher salt is a good one, and brings up another question: do the recipes you use specify volumes or weights of salt the other ingredients?

Morton's kosher salt measures very differently from Diamond brand -- the same volume of Morton's weighs at least half again as much as Diamond, so it can really mess up a brine recipe that uses volume measurements if you switch from one brand to another.

What's the recipe you've been using?

[scubadoo97]

This site compares the table salt, Morton's Kosher salt and Diamond Crystal Kosher salt

http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/salt.html#measures

Their related articles on brining would be a good read as well

[Dave the Cook]

You don't have to go that far. Check out the eGullet Culinary Institute's course on brining.

[Blether]

Weinoo's right. For your taste, you need to get a certain amount of salt into the product - that's a function of its size & shape, the concentration of the brine and the length of brining time (assuming you use some weight to fully submerge it, too).

Depending on the thickness fof product, you might need to leave it out of the brine for a while for te saltiness to spread throughout - i.e. to migrate into the centre. For any brined product, you can soak in plain water to leach out salt. Again, you might need time afterwards for equalisation.

How do you measure the salt ? Granularity can make a big difference in the amount of salt in a volume measure. Weight is more deterministic. It's standard practice, I believe, to brine with an 80% salt solution - for which a primitive test is that it just floats a raw potato.

[hansjoakim]

I am sorry for bumping this old thread, but I just received "Nose to tail" and "Beyond nose to tail", and I got a beautiful slab of pork belly curing in Henderson's brine as we speak. I'd like to have a stab at his boiled pork belly and lentils this weekend, and this thread got my attention.

Henderson's brine is a 15% brine, and by the looks of it, is quite similar to the saumure anglaise described in Grigson's "Charcuterie and French pork cookery". Grigson's brine is approximately 10% if I'm not mistaken. Grigson writes that pork joints could spend anywhere from 3 to 30 days in the brine. I'm not certain if she operates with refrigerator temperatures, so since curing takes longer in colder temperatures, I bet it could be left in there even longer if the curing bucket is kept in the fridge.

When it's time to cook it, she suggests simmering it in unsalted water for 5 - 10 minutes. If the simmering liquid is too salty, drain it and start over. A piece of pork belly, prepared along these lines (i.e. Henderson/Grigson), would make a piece of petit salé, correct? As such, I think it would be a good idea to rinse the meat thoroughly after removing it from the brine, and either soak it in cold water a couple of hours (suggested in "The Complete Robuchon" recipe for salt pork), or give it the simmer-and-taste treatment suggested by Grigson. Then proceed as usual for salt pork.

Without having tried either yet (although I'll have tried Henderson's recipe by the coming weekend), I get a feeling that Henderson's and Grigson's brines are the wet-cure equivalents of Ruhlman & Polcyn's and Fearnley-Whittingstall's salt pork dry cures. I'm no brine expert, but I think the purpose of the Henderson/Grigson brine is to conserve (i.e. produce salt pork) rather than to season and produce more juicy meat (as you would with, say Ruhlman & Polcyn's brine recipes or similar 2 - 3% brines).

Has anyone else had any luck with Henderson's pork belly recipes, by the way? There is an account of both roasted (link here) and boiled (link here) pork belly recipes at nosetotailathome.com.

Edited July 25, 2011 by hansjoakim (log)

[jrshaul]

Why is it so salty? This quote about Henderson tells the entire story (bold mine):

Still a heavy smoker, he also drinks and parties, because his doctors have advised him to do anything that makes him feel happy and relaxed. Of course, he’s happiest and most relaxed when he’s in his restaurant, especially in his kitchens.

Example A. Yet another taste-impaired chain-smoking celebrity chef perpetuating the myth of brining.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I think pork isn't brined enough. If you have a nicely marbled roast and don't overcook it, it's not necessary, but it can make a big difference for cuts bereft of fat - especially if you cook them to 165.

The largest problem I've had with salt brines is the quantity of meat that is already pre-brined. The end result is appalling. It's also quite distressing when your souvlaki shrink by half when you cook 'em.

Edited July 25, 2011 by jrshaul (log)

[Shalmanese]

There's no way any smoking related taste impairment could account for a 15% brine. For reference, sea water is less than 4% salinity. Someone with taste so impaired wouldn't be able to taste anything else, full stop.

[hansjoakim]

The brine-curing technique is covered also in another book by Grigson, titled "Good Things". A preview is available via Google Books (link here). The chapter is titled "Salting meat", starting on page 67. Here, a 20% brine is used, and suggested curing times range from 36 hours for ducks and up to 10 days for pork, beef and lamb. Grigson also writes that joints can be kept in the brine for two to three weeks, as long as the brine is kept cool, below 60F.

[Blether]

... in another book by Grigson, titled "Good Things"...

That's actually a 17.mumble% brine, the British pint being 20oz.

In her preface to the chapter, under "Salting Time" she says

Note: Joints required for roasting rather than boiling, will be improved by a 12-hour soak in brine, without tasting too salty.

- and goes on to provide specific recipes for meats salted in the manner you describe, hansjoakim, all of them involving boiling in plenty of liquid, and discards of the same when it's too salty.

(Personally, I can see that 12 hours would get the right amount of salt into a joint, but only about 1/4" - 3/8" of the way in. I'd want to give it additional time in the fridge to equalise / penetrate to the centre; or as I do in practice, use a weaker brine for longer, with a short final equalisation time. It's also possible of course to plan a brine concentration that will result in the desired salt concentration throughout the finished meat and the final brine, as someone described (in connection with bacon curing) before on eG - so that you put the meat in and never have to worry about it ending up too salty).

Edited July 26, 2011 by Blether (log)

[hansjoakim]

You're right, Blether, I was a bit quick in the salt % calculation... I do like SI units.

I'd also prefer a weaker brine (2% - 3%) prior to roasting. An option would be to use Grigson's recipe for glazed salted pork: Boil first in plenty of water until nearly done (to flush out much of the excess salt from the brine), then glaze and finish in the oven. Grigson has several recipes along the same lines in "Charcuterie and French pork cookery" as well.

[Blether]

There are plenty of Grigson fans around, me included:

Muddy mullet

Franken-fry's

and Gentleman's Pate

[Samo154]

I'm using a simple brining recipe (salt,sugar ect) but I'm wondering if I brine my poussin or pork lion then vac pack the meat how long would this last in the fridge if not being cooked on that day? Would it become salty or anything? It's a wet brine and I'm washing the meat once brined. Its a 6% of brine to 1L recipe

[MSRadell]

I normally brine just before cooking but have held food after brining. If you wash it off before vacuum sealing it you shouldn't have a problem. It's not going to have any more salt than it would if you cooked it directly.

[btbyrd]

The average preference for salt content in a finished dish is roughly 1% by weight. If you leave a piece of meat in a 6% brine for longer than initially suggested, it'll become overly salty and you will have wasted your meat. A better approach is to use equilibrium brining, where you measure the weight of the meat and the water you'll use for the brine and then add 1% by weight in salt of the total. This takes a bit longer to brine than a traditional (stronger) brine, but you never run the risk of over-salting and you can leave (basically) for as long as you'd like.

[patrickamory]

I don't like wet-brined meat.

[MSRadell]

I don't like wet-brined meat.

Why? I certainly don't like all meats to be brined but in many cases chicken, turkey and pork come out considerably better IMHO if they are brined before hand. I don't use a pure salt brine, I also add brown sugar and some other spices in most cases.

[patrickamory]

I don't like it because I find it imparts a chalky texture to the meat, at least in the case of pork and chicken.

 

I dry-brine and love it! Frequently I let the salted meat sit directly on the refrigerator rack so that the cold air can circulate around it.

[btbyrd]

 

I dry-brine and love it! Frequently I let the salted meat sit directly on the refrigerator rack so that the cold air can circulate around it.

 

I really love this technique on beef, but I've never tried it with pork and poultry (which I almost always wet brine). I'll have to give a dry brine (cure?) a try next time I'm doing some pork chops or a tenderloin roast.

[cyalexa]

I leave salted leap-frogged chickens uncovered in the refrigerator overnight. Slow roast them to 155F in the breast. Let set on the counter while the oven heats to 550F then crisp the skin. I used to spatchcock but learned the leap-frog method here and far prefer it as it preserves the yummy back.