Brining Meat

Intro

Why should you brine your meat? Well, in short, because it makes it delicious and not dry out when you roast it. Alton Brown I'm sure somewhere has a long scientific explanation as to why you should do this and why it, but overall, a lot of food is just tastier when it is properly salted, and brining helps with that, as well as remain juicier under some of the harsher cooking, preventing it from drying out. This recipe is originally based on his Thanksgiving Turkey brine.

I especially recommend this if you are grilling, roasting, smoking, or otherwise cooking poultry. I do a smoked turkey for Thanksgiving every year and one of the key things I do is brine it for 3 days beforehand. It infuses the meat with a great flavor and is always very juicy despite spending hours on the smoker.

Below I list a ratio of Salt, Sugar, and Water. I do the solids by weight, because kosher salt, table salt, and pickling salt are all different grain sizes. You can use any of them, I tend to use pickling salt because it dissolves really easily. The only difference between pickling and kosher salts is the grain size. You also can replace the regular sugar with brown sugar if you want.

For the Water, I highly recommend replacing up to the first half of it with Vegetable Stock for extra flavor, but you don't have to. For the other half of the water, use a mix of ice and water. Another option, is to replace it with apple juice. However, you want something fairly neutral in pH. I don't recommend any citrus juice for brine.

As for volume, I try to have at least half as much liquid by volume as the meat, if not the same amount. You want to be able to fully submerge the meat in the brine with a bit of liquid around it.

I usually use either zip-top freezer bags or a large plastic container. You do not need something air tight, but if you user the freezer bags, definitely try to push out as much air as possible before closing. Additionally, you might want to double bag it, just in case of a rupture.

Flavoring

You can also flavor your brine. You don't need to add anything, but I recommend any of the following, and you can do this in larger chunks without needing to grind it: Garlic, Black Peppercorns, Ginger, Pickling Spice Mix, Coriander Seeds, Mustard Seeds, Juniper Berries, Apples. You can experiment with this. I include an amount below for the garlic and peppercorns, but I also just eyeball it.

Ingredients (Ratio)

50g Salt

80g Sugar

1/2 Gallon of Water-Like Substance (See Below)

1/2 Gallon of Ice/Water

2 Teaspoon Whole Black Peppercorns

2 Teaspoon Minced Garlic

Instructions

1. Put Half your water into a pot. If you are using a stock, put the stock in here.

2. Toss in all the other ingredients, and bring the water just to a boil.

3. Turn off the heat and stir to make sure the salt and sugar dissolves.

4. Mix in the ice water and stir it all together. Refrigerate overnight so it cools down to a food safe temperature.

5. Place your meat into the brine for at least 8 hours. Multiple days is better for everything that is thicker than 1". If you can, flip the meat over half way through or every day.

6. When you are ready to cook, remove the meat from the brine, and rinse it off in cold water. Pat dry and proceed to cook. I suggest adding a dry rub at this point as well.