My brine disaster!

So a few days ago I was watching Nightlite and they had Chef Andrew Carmellini discussing cooking. During his segement, he showed this chicken recipie that looked awesome. So, I thought - hmm... I could do that! (You can watch it here - http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Plateli ... id=8670906)

The first thing he said to do was brine the chicken for 45 minutes. I've never brined chicken or any other meat before but I looked it up online and it looked simple enough. I added the water, salt, and sugar and let the concoction stand for about an hour.

I followed everything else (with the exception of the fancy aregano and fance olive oil - just standard chepo versions) as he said. I also used regular chicken breast rather than bone in chicken breast.

So.... my chicken tasted as if I was eating pure salt! Clearly, I used too much salt in my brine. I used 4 cups of water, 4 tablespoons of sugar, and a 1/4 cup of sea salt. I foudn this brine recipie online.

So, was it just that I used too much salt?

Your brine is pretty standard. But I think the problem was that the brine penetrated the boneless breast faster than it would have penetrated a bone-in breast. You could cut the brine time to a half hour or reduce the salt content by half. You might also give the breasts a quick rinse in plain tap water after you take them out of the brine.

Note that your brine is pretty similar to Cooks Illustrated's recommendation:
http://www.cooksillustrated.com/images/ ... basics.pdf
(thought they use a bit more sugar than you did.)

As Darren noted, rinsing is crucial. I always aggressively rinse off a salt brine, but if you did that and it didn't do the trick, then use less salt in your next brine.

I agree. A thorough rinse could make all the difference.

Was it in the brine for one hour, or you let the brine sit for an hour?

Aside from what has been mentioned, I sometimes dilute my brine if I still need the volume of water to cover the amount of meat being used. This also gves a longer window to leave the meat in without over seasoning.

Jeff

The brine was for one hour.

Rinse... hmm... no, I did not do that. I actually took out some of the salt from the brine (you know some of the salt at the bottom) and sprinkled it onto the chicken. Guess I shouldn't have done that .

So, as you can see... I'm not much of a cook .

Notes for next time:
- half the salt
- let sit for 30-45 minutes
- rinse thoroughly

Others?

Darren72 wrote:Note that your brine is pretty similar to Cooks Illustrated's recommendation: http://www.cooksillustrated.com/images/ ... basics.pdf
(thought they use a bit more sugar than you did.)

Thanks for this! Pictures make everything easier!

I see another thing to add to my list - use kosher salt. I used sea salt.

chibobbie wrote:Notes for next time:
- half the salt
- let sit for 30-45 minutes
- rinse thoroughly

Others?

One more:
Use bone-in chicken instead of boneless breast. In my experience, that will make a significant difference.

Good luck,
--Rich

The other thought (perhaps this is clear from your pix -- I didn't go look): Did you start with chicken that was "enhanced"? Was it labeled as "including up to x% water" or some other blah blah blah? In which case, it's already been brined once -- brining a second time will have limited success.

chibobbie wrote:

Darren72 wrote:Note that your brine is pretty similar to Cooks Illustrated's recommendation: http://www.cooksillustrated.com/images/ ... basics.pdf
(thought they use a bit more sugar than you did.)

Thanks for this! Pictures make everything easier!

I see another thing to add to my list - use kosher salt. I used sea salt.

Actually, the type of salt you use (table, sea, kosher, etc) doesn't matter that much - they also taste the same (though some people say they can detect iodine in iodized salt). The only issue is that all of these different types of salt have different densities. So a tablespoon of table salt has more "salt" than a tablespoon of "sea salt" or "kosher salt". A good recipe writer will specify the type of salt they mean, rather than simply saying "salt". Also, if you search on-line you'll see conversions between Morton's kosher salt, Diamond Crystal kosher salt, and table salt. The Cooks Illustrated page has some of this information. (For small amounts, this doesn't matter that much. But for brine, it could. Also, note that Morton's and Diamond Crystal are both kosher salt, but have different densities.)

"Sea salt" is a little tricky because it tends to be even more coarse (i.e. less dense) than kosher salt, but there isn't a uniform size for sea salt.

Finally, salt doesn't dissolve well in cold water. So most recipes for brine tell you to heat the water to dissolve the salt. Instead, you can use Canning/pickling salt, which is similar to kosher salt (and also made by Morton's) but it dissolves in cold water. I tend to use this (and bar sugar, which also dissolves in cold water), unless I have some other reason to heat the brine liquid (i.e. some spices integrate into the brine if they are heated).

Oh, don't brine kosher chickens - the koshering process effectively already brines the chicken.

I talked a coworker into brining a turkey for thanksgiving. They didnt know they were supposed to rinse it and it turned out like a salt lick.

chibobbie wrote:Rinse... hmm... no, I did not do that. I actually took out some of the salt from the brine (you know some of the salt at the bottom) and sprinkled it onto the chicken. Guess I shouldn't have done that .

I'm pretty sensitive to salt so I never resalt brined or kosher chicken. I have in my notes to rinse the chicken after brining but honestly, I'm pretty sure I didn't always do that and mine still turned out OK. I use a little less salt than Cook's Illustrated recommends for Morton's though (only a 1/4 cup rather than 1/4 plus 2 T). If you're not a big fan of salty stuff you might want to take the salt measurements with (sorry) a grain of salt and adjust them down a little.

I've used this recipe from Weber's site five or six times over the past few years with great success.

http://www.weber.com/recipes/Recipe.aspx?rid=159

I like to use Ruhlman's ratio for brine IIRC it is a 5% salt solution

I start with 500 grams of boiling water I add 50 grams salt and 25 grams sugar
mix until the salt and sugar is dissolved.

With the container on the scale, add ice until the weight hits 1075 grams

done....