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What's this all about? I make mistakes brining and cooking chickens for you the people of something awful to laugh at while also mastering roast chicken. As a result I leave behind a record of how to accomplish said chicken roasting. It is my fondest hope that one day in the future this record will assist a young goon in getting furiously laid after fixing a chicken dinner for their date. If I'm lucky a pro-chef of some sort drops by and offers some tips or criticisms (probably criticisms). What’s a Brine? Brines are ideally a flavorful liquid with salt suspended in solution so we can take advantage of osmosis to make something taste better. Typically this thing is a white meat of some sort, pork and chicken are top choices for brining. I've never seen it applied to red meat, don't ask me why but it's something I'll play with eventually. I’m personally focused on chicken at the moment. Some folks will insist you need sugar or another sweet ingredient but they’re ignorant. It’s just a common practice, not a requirement. I’m choosing to avoid too much sweetness right now, though I’ve had great results in the past and I suspect my current brine isn’t helping with crispy skin during cooking as much as one with more sugar would. I’ve found lots and lots of different “perfect ratios” for the salt to solution mix. I’ve settled on ¾ cup salt to 1 gallon solution as my base. Plenty of sources say more or less than that but this has worked well for me so far. I’m also not convinced the ratio changes much unless you stray into the a weird soggy dry cure paste sort of area. In theory homeostasis makes it all but impossible to over do a brine. In theory, I’m sure I’ll find a way to gently caress up eventually. The highest risk is leaving lots of salt dried on the outside. Isn’t that like a marinade? Nope, that’s an acid based process and not part of this post. What’s Osmosis? This is osmosis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmosis I’m not going to post a full science lesson but we need to know the jist of what is going on. The essential part of osmosis we need to understand is that meat has semi-permeable membranes that we can transport flavor through if we create an imbalance of salt outside the meat’s membranes. Essentially if our chicken is surrounded by flavorful liquid that is saltier than in the inside of the chicken’s cells, the flavorful liquid will pass through the cell walls and carry whatever flavor is in our solution inside the cell itself. If you still don’t get it, think of the chicken as a castle and salt as little invading soldiers. There are fewer soldiers inside the castle than needed so the salty little assholes are going to invade the castle and rape and pillage their way to a sweet chicken dinner. Some of you are asking. Won’t this be salty as gently caress? Nope, not if we do it right. Why? Homeostasis. Homeostasis. What’s that? Check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeostasis Here’s the short version: Homeostasis means the salt solution is going to try and stay balanced between the outside and inside of our chicken. In other words, not all the salt is going to go into our chicken. This also means not all of our flavorful ingredients will either and that’s important when considering how we make our brine so keep it in mind. Powerful flavors are a good thing here because we’re going to absorb only a portion of it. The other benefit of homeostasis is that it will pump moisture into our chicken which will help it stand up to cooking later and let us produce a juicier meal if we let it rest right later. My Brine Experiments: #1 Simple Worcestershire Brine 
#2 Brown Sugar, Ketchup and Worcestershire 
My Storage: I’m questioning how wise it is to store in the fridge. In theory cold slows down molecular movement and is a bit self defeating here but that may just mean things take longer not that it tastes any better or worse. On the other hand salmonella sucks and I don’t have something more clever yet.
Cooking Methods: Prep for any method:
Hot and Fast: The way your mom likes it
Low and Slow: The other way your mom likes it
The long term goal: Continued experimentation. I want to identify ingredients that work well in brines for chicken in particular. I’ve found tons of recipes for brines but a lot of them seem poorly thought out. Many involve herbs and spices in the brine itself and this makes no sense to me. Herbs and spices tend to provide flavor through their oils and oils are terrible at osmosis. This means focusing on ingredients that can be a solvent or can be suspended in solution but you know... also taste good. Ostrava fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Sep 2, 2014 |
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Aug 24, 2014 05:40
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 03:46 |
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Brining is rad. Just leave a chicken in some saltwater overnight and when you roast that chicken it will be the tastiest juiciest chicken that was ever roasted. After trying it for myself a few weeks back I got to thinking if it was possible to do a turkey like this, I guess you'd just need a really big container and more time for the juices to do their thing?
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Aug 25, 2014 00:36
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I spatchcock mine and leave it in a 20 gallon bucket overnight every Thanksgiving.
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Aug 25, 2014 05:05
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I really like injection brining, its a good way to get spices and herbs deep into the meat. I also find brining moistens the skin of poultry too much and it doesn't get as crispy as if you didn't brine or injection brined
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Aug 25, 2014 05:18
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Snodgrass Supreme posted:After trying it for myself a few weeks back I got to thinking if it was possible to do a turkey like this, I guess you'd just need a really big container and more time for the juices to do their thing?
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Aug 25, 2014 15:55
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Snodgrass Supreme posted:Brining is rad. Just leave a chicken in some saltwater overnight and when you roast that chicken it will be the tastiest juiciest chicken that was ever roasted. After trying it for myself a few weeks back I got to thinking if it was possible to do a turkey like this, I guess you'd just need a really big container and more time for the juices to do their thing? it's 100% possible to brine a turkey; I do it for Thanksgiving every year. A 5 gallon bucket (like one you might use for homebrewing) works perfectly for it
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Aug 25, 2014 16:04
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There's a pretty good article about brining turkeys (and some experimentation) from Kenji on seriouseats: http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/11/the-food-lab-the-truth-about-brining-turkey-thanksgiving.html One of this points which I think is pretty relevant: quote:As plump and juicy as a benevolent aunt in a Disney film. Tasting it, there's a definite case of wet-sponge syndrome. Water comes out of it as you chew, giving you the illusion of juiciness, but the texture is a little too loose, and the flavor a little bland. That being said, I like the idea of Worchester powder. I've been meaning to experiment with freeze-dried combinations of spices as a crushed dry-brine for Chicken. Its been working pretty well crushing everything up in a mortar-pestle.
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Aug 25, 2014 17:27
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Shadowhand00 posted:There's a pretty good article about brining turkeys (and some experimentation) from Kenji on seriouseats: This stuff has some serious kick. Just opening the bottle will make your eyes water. I've used to awesome effect in some soups and for steak/steak sauces. I'm disappointed with how poorly the flavor came through in the brine above. I have an update planned and i'll post the next recipe I'm going to try as well.
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Aug 26, 2014 00:43
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granpa yum posted:I really like injection brining, its a good way to get spices and herbs deep into the meat. I also find brining moistens the skin of poultry too much and it doesn't get as crispy as if you didn't brine or injection brined The trick is to take the poultry out and let it rest at room temperature for 45 min to 1 hour before you throw it in the oven. Also pat it dry as soon as you remove it from the brine. The skin on the chicken from the OP came out crispy despite a 24+ hour soak.
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Aug 26, 2014 00:45
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OP, can you go into more detail why a sugary brined meat needs to be low and slow? I've fast roasted after a sugar brine without obvious incident but maybe I'm missing something.
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Sep 4, 2014 12:00
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sudonim posted:OP, can you go into more detail why a sugary brined meat needs to be low and slow? I've fast roasted after a sugar brine without obvious incident but maybe I'm missing something. Sure. I have a pic to post of a slightly charred chicken after a sugar brine using the 450 degree cooking method. I think that'll illustrate the situation. Here's what I learned: Sugar has different characteristics at different temperatures and refinement methods. Check out this thread: http://www.thesmokering.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=836 Here's the jist of it though. For White Sugar: Light caramel 320-338F Medium caramel 356F Dark caramel 374F So basically cooking a sugar brine at the 450 degree temp point = burning. According to this chart you could probably get away with 350 or less. I'm going to have to do some testing and see how the moisture etc effects stuff. I also use brown sugar in my brine currently so who knows if it has the same caramelization points. I'll need to find a pastry chef or some one who knows better than me. Ostrava fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 02:30
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