Questions About Brining

I don't do much brining, and am trying to learn more and have a couple of questions.

Cooks Illustrated gives a formula for a 1/2-1 hour brine for a whole chicken and Ad Hoc at Home gives a formula for a 12 hour brine for chicken pieces. Also on a recent episode of The Best Thing I Ever Ate they talked about brining country chops at Vinegar Hill House for 4 days I believe. Why? Is this for the same reason meat that is marinated longer tastes better? Does a stronger brine do the same thing in less time-it appears not to otherwise why brine longer? Lastly, other than recipes or trial and error are there any formulae for longer brines that you use if I wanted to improvise my own?

Thanks,

Jeff

A half hour or hour brine is not going to penetrate the whole chicken. It's going to give it a light version of the flavor, intentionally. The longer period will soak all the way through, generally the timing has to do not only with how much you want it to absorb but how dense the flesh is, which is why a pork chop needs longer, as does, say, a corned beef brisket.

I will say re Cooks Illustrated that after my first year brining a turkey, I loved their method but I cut the intensity of the brine literally in half the next year. Too salty, too much of everything.

Just yesterday I looked up brining in the Ultimate Cookbook (or whatever it's called; I'm up here and the bookshelf is down there) that seems to be Christopher Kimball's last word on everything, and regardless of what the magazine articles might say, he seems in there to be entirely against brining of chickens or turkeys or any other fowl. Doesn't care for the mushiness that he claims results from brining. I was rigorous about brining before today, but his lack of enthusiasm got me wondering. The unbrined beer can chicken on the grill that we had tonight was plenty moist enough.

I always defrost frozen shrimp in a brine, simply because it's much better than unbrined defrosting: plumper, better texture, and a bit of saltiness.

It might could be that the whole turkey brining thing got going because the brine was used as the defrosting medium, same as with shrimp. That would make sense.

But for a never-been-frozen chicken, it might very well be that brining is of no positive effect.

Just my 2¢ suspicion...