The Effect of Salt - Brining and Marinades

So brining with salt infused flavor into meat. It is my understanding that if the salt ratio is off too much that it will do the opposite and pull out meat juices via osmosis (or reverse osmosis - I forget)

That being said I wanted to do an overnight Marinade and the recipe calls for a mostly soy sauce based marinade. Given the amount of time (overnight), I am assuming that it might be likely that the salty marinade will suck out fat and juices from the meat?

So I am confused if salty overnight marinades will add new flavor at the expense of losing juices. Any thoughts?

How long is a piece of string? It all depends. What kind of meat/protein can make a big difference as well as the concentration of salt.

This might be helpful http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/11/the-food-lab-the-truth-about-brining-turkey-thanksgiving.html#flavor.

It really depends on the meat and what you are going to do with it. Chicken and certain cuts of pork should probably not be marinated too long otherwise the texture can be a bit mushy for some.

Also you can't really season the interior of meat well, even with prolonged marinades. You brine/salt mostly for textural reasons.

Its a skirt steak. Overnight may be too long, but its damn good with soy sauce. The science of salt still interests me. I will check out that serious eats article, thanks.

AndrewB wrote:Its a skirt steak. Overnight may be too long, but its damn good with soy sauce. The science of salt still interests me. I will check out that serious eats article, thanks.

Overnight would definitely be too long, especially with beef in a soy sauce brine/marinade, IMO. Trial and error, while recording your results, might be the best way to go, especially since you'll be able to dial in to your own preferences.

For me, I've found 1 cup of morton kosher salt with 1 gallon of water can get the job done on smaller cuts, like pieces of chicken, relatively fast -- sometimes in an hour or even less. With slightly larger cuts like small pork roasts or whole chickens, maybe 2 hours, max. Turkeys . . . overnight but exactly how long depends on the size of the bird. But as someone who has overbrined from time to time, it can definitely happen. The meat can get very jerky-like.

There are so many other variables (temperature of brine, type of salt, sweetener or not, other components, to name just a few). While there are charts all over the internet, they tend to go in a bunch of different directions, which is why I think trial and error pegged to your own personal taste is the best approach.

=R=

Sorry for adding "less relevant information" to this interesting post, but I heard talking about "salt extracting humidity leaving the meat dry".
For certain kind of meat (steaks and co.) and for certain kind of cooking techniques (grilling) salting is a way to increase both flavor and moisture. It depends on time.
Here my contribution to the discussion
These are two nice Porterhouses, just out of the fridge:it's 7:09pm.



The surface it's dry, as you can see



I sprinkle some salt, this time fine salt, over the meat on both sides






after 15 minutes the salt drew the moist from inside the meat to the surface
Grilling the steaks now would be a double mistake: dry meat and of course no Maillard reaction, because we need a dry environment to caramelize the sugars and proteins; only dry environments can reach the necessary heat to develop the flavorful compounds (320F and over).



In presence of water the impact with the heat is reduced to 212F. So, grill now the meat and you may risk have a dry flavorless steak without grill marks.

Let's wait few more minutes.

30 minutes later and the surface is already drying



at 8:00pm the steak is dry, on the surface. Due to the osmotic process the humidity has been reabsorbed by the meat fibers, and the salt brought its flavor inside



now the Porterhouse is ready to go on the hot grill; it also reached the room temperature, allowing a quick cook for a brown outside and a rear inside (my taste of course)




et voila'



Perfect! again this is my preference for the cooking time, ( but I eat anything still or slow moving )

My steak method is similar to Albicusi's except I:

1) leave steaks on a elevated rack
2) dry brine for closer to 1.5 hours
3) wipe off any moisture
4) re-season just before grilling over charcoal

Thanks, Rick, for sharing your approach; you know what I read (but it seems to me a little to complex)? to salt, wait 45 minutes, and put in the freezer for 20 minutes to completely dry the surface of the meat.
Maybe one day I'll give it a try. Maybe.

IIRC, Kenji in his Food Lab book says that after salting the period from 3 minutes to 45 minutes is the dangerous period: just keep your hands off the meat. Seems to square with the advice given above.

Burgers, for example, he recommends a heavy salting just immediately before putting on the grill.

Geo