Transcription
So today, we're going to talk about when and why you should be utilizing brining in your cooking. Brining basically just means soaking food, usually meat, in a salt solution for an extended period of time. This process helps to tenderize the meat and allows it to retain more moisture during cooking. Now, keep in mind that the liquid doesn't have to be water; you could also use something like buttermilk for meat that you plan to fry, or even juice to add a little bit of extra flavor and browning from the sugar.
To understand why brining is useful, let's first take a look at what's actually happening when meat cooks. Essentially, as the meat heats up, its muscle fibers contract, causing the liquid contained within those fibers to be expelled. As you can imagine, if too much of that liquid is expelled, the meat can become overly dry pretty quickly. However, when meat is brined in a salt solution, the solution actually dissolves some parts of the protein structure of the meat. As a result, those muscle fibers can't contract fully, and therefore, they retain more of their moisture during cooking. Additionally, as the proteins break down, the meat also becomes more tender overall. Both of these factors combined lead to an extremely tender and juicy result.
Now, before we go any further, let's also address marinades. If you're like I was, you may not be 100% clear on what the actual difference is between a brine and a marinade. As we've discussed, the purpose of brining is to tenderize the meat and lock in moisture, while the primary purpose of a marinade is to add flavor. Marinades will typically contain some form of acid, like vinegar or citrus juice, whereas brines generally don't. Marinades also tend to contain a lot of spices and herbs, and while you can incorporate those into a brine, the effect would be pretty subtle since brines are generally a lot more diluted.
As you can see, brining can provide some great benefits, but that doesn't mean it's ideal in all circumstances. Specifically, whether or not you should brine is highly dependent on the type of meat you're using. Generally, leaner meats like chicken breasts and pork chops will benefit the most from brining because they don't have that fat to help them remain juicy. For the same reason, you may also want to brine a pork tenderloin, other chicken parts, or even turkey, depending on how you plan to cook it. However, when it comes to skin-on poultry, you may not want to use a traditional brine because the brine can cause the skin to become soggy, which then prevents it from becoming crispy during cooking. In that case, it's better to use a technique that some people refer to as dry brining, which basically just means salting the meat in advance and then letting it rest for anywhere from about 1 to 48 hours, depending on the size of the cut of meat you're using.
For a steak or something like a bone-in, skin-on chicken thigh, you'd want to salt at least one to two hours in advance, whereas for something like a whole turkey, you'd want to salt all the way up to about 48 hours in advance to ensure that the salt has time to penetrate all the way through. One other disadvantage of a wet brine is that it can cause your meat to taste slightly less flavorful since the meat retains more water. For that reason, you may want to consider using a dry brine in some cases as well. Generally, I prefer to use a wet brine for very lean meats like pork chops, pork tenderloin, and boneless skinless chicken parts. Then, I'll use a dry brine when dealing with skin-on poultry, along with all types of fattier meats, like pretty much all cuts of beef, especially those tougher, fatty cuts that are typically used for braising, like pork shoulder, beef chuck, short ribs, and so on.
It's also worth noting that, in general, brining is really only necessary for your dry cooking methods, like roasting, grilling, pan-searing, and frying. It's not necessary for something like a braise because, in that case, there will be plenty of liquid during cooking to keep the meat moist.
Now that we know what brining is and why you should do it, let's get into how you should do it. Most brines range between about a 3% and 6% salt solution, depending on the size of the cut of meat you're using. Personally, I always like to use a 6% salt solution and then vary the length of time that I brine depending on the meat. That 6% is by weight, or in other words, 60 grams of salt per liter of water. If you don't have a scale, you can just look at the nutrition label on your salt container to convert from weight to volume. In my case, with the Diamond Crystal brand kosher salt that I use, 60 grams comes out to a little less than half a cup, and this amount of salt will easily dissolve at room temperature with just a bit of whisking.
If you want to add sugar to your brine for some extra browning and flavor, you're welcome to do that as well. Personally, I don't like to add sugar when I'm brining chicken, but for something like a pork chop, I think it can be a nice addition. If you do that, you'll want to use equal parts sugar and salt, so again, that's 60 grams of each per liter of water. Since the sugar is optional, you can use less than that too if you prefer.
Either way, once your brine is prepared, you can just toss in your meat, making sure that everything is completely submerged. In this case, I'm using some boneless skinless chicken breasts along with some bone-in skin-on chicken breasts to demonstrate the differences between the two, which you'll see in a minute. For pieces of meat this size, I'd recommend brining for at least three hours, but it is pretty forgiving, so you can even brine up to overnight without worrying about them becoming too salty.
If you were to brine something larger, like a whole pork tenderloin, for example, you'd want to let it go longer—more like 8 to 16 hours, depending on the size. But of course, you'll also just want to experiment and see what you like best based on your preference for saltiness.
In my case here, after removing the chicken from the brine, I just added a few herbs and spices for flavor, then baked it at 300 degrees until it reached an internal temperature of 155 degrees Fahrenheit. This leads me to my next tip that will help you achieve much juicier chicken. You've probably always been told that chicken should be cooked to 165 degrees Fahrenheit because that is the point at which 99.99999% of all harmful salmonella bacteria are killed instantaneously. However, it's not quite that simple. As Kenji Lopez-Alt explains in "The Food Lab," the bacteria aren't just simply alive below 165 degrees Fahrenheit and dead above that temperature; they actually start to die off as low as 135 degrees Fahrenheit, but it just takes much longer at that temperature.
As you increase the temperature from there, the bacteria die off faster and faster, and by the time you reach 155 degrees Fahrenheit, it takes just about 45 seconds for the bacteria to die off to a safe level. As most of you know, meat will maintain its internal temperature for quite a while after being removed from the heat—far longer than 45 seconds. In many cases, it will even continue to rise in temperature after it's been removed. In my case, the chicken actually remained at my target temperature for about a full five minutes, far longer than the 45 seconds required to reduce the bacteria to a safe level.
The general recommendation of 165 degrees Fahrenheit was meant to be an extremely conservative food safety measure, which is why the USDA still uses that number. However, it tends to result in dry and stringy chicken. For those of us who look a bit deeper into it, we know that that number is overkill, and we can actually cook our chicken to 150 or 155 degrees Fahrenheit without any worries. Keep in mind that this only really applies to the white meat, so for the darker meat of the legs and thighs, it's still best cooked to around 175 degrees Fahrenheit to achieve the ideal texture.
As you can see, applying this knowledge in combination with the saltwater brine results in a beautifully tender and juicy chicken breast. Similar results can be achieved with the brined skin-on chicken breast, but as you can see, the skin isn't quite as crispy as it could be. For that reason, I do prefer the dry brine in that case.
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