Why Brine?

I said I would talk about brining meat. I brine almost all my protein, even baby back and spare ribs. Here is some brine I made for my ribs. It has chipotle peppers, limes, garlic, and other things.

I personally do not follow any recipe or formula for brining meats. Years ago, I did follow one and regretted it. Whenever I followed a recipe for making brines, I found them to be salty. All brines require salt. Salt helps draw out impurities in the meat and the brine enter. I have noticed at a few gourmet stores, they sell bags of brine mix. If you choose to buy this stuff, then I guess that is your choice. My thinking is, it is probably overly salty. You also don’t really know what spices are in it. If you make your own, you can put in whatever flavor you want: lemons, limes, mangoes, rosemary, or whatever you like.

After I brined my ribs, I took some chipotle peppers and limes, covered my ribs, and grilled them. Then, I finished them with maple syrup.

These ribs were a huge success.

Here I have a picture of chicken brining in buttermilk.

You must have sugar and salt. What I do is take enough water to cover the amount of meat I will be using. I add salt and sugar, a little more sugar than salt, and I add brown sugar. I make sure to use just enough water to dissolve the salt/sugar by boiling it, then add cold water and some ice to cool down the brine before adding any meat. I add everything else: herbs, fruits, peppers, etc. I try to fit my brine to suit what I am making. Brines help add moisture and flavor; they also help to keep moisture in your meat when you overcook it.

If you decide to research brines and you feel that what other people say tends to differ from what I say, (like you need a certain ratio of salt to water, or you should only brine small pieces of meat for a certain number of hours) then do this: use trial and error. I really believe that trial and error is the best when it comes to brines. One thing I have done, if needed, is brine in the sink. I brined a turkey for Thanksgiving. It was so big I could not put it in the fridge, so I cleaned out the sink really well, filled the sink with my flavored brine, put in the turkey, added lots of ice to keep the turkey cold, then covered it with plastic wrap.

You can also put your proteins in a bucket, like a pickle bucket, then add ice or even ice packs so it stays cold.

Here are the pictures of the chicken I brined in brown sugar, salt, fresh mango, pineapple, chipotle pepper, ginger, and a few other things.

The chicken came out great! I made that brine up as a test for a marinade for an upcoming wedding where they want chicken with some of those flavors.

Here is a good article I found on why you should brine from a Prochef Brief I recieved. It really breaks down the reasons for brining.

So with all this culinary cred behind it, why is it that brining gets put to use in most home kitchens only once a year, if even that?

Chalk it up to a lot of misconceptions, say chefs.

Brining involves two basic scientific principles, diffusion and osmosis, which occur when meat is submerged in a saltwater solution. To maintain equilibrium between the substances, the brine is absorbed into the meat.

Once there, the salt unravels the meat’s protein cells, making even more room for the liquid to enter. Add in other ingredients — sugar, molasses, rosemary, vinegar, garlic, onions, etc.—and that’s when the fun really begins.

While the process itself may sound complicated, the actual work to make it happen isn’t.

“It’s one of those things that chefs do that is very easy for a cook to do at home,” says chef Paul Fehribach of Big Jones, 5347 N. Clark. “It could make their home cooking much more rewarding.”

For his Niman Ranch pork chop dish, sweet tea gets added to the brine mixture — about 4 ounces to 1 gallon of salted water — but he also recommends Calvados or apple cider vinegar.

“A little bit of acidity makes something more mouthwatering when it touches your tongue,” he says.

At the Bristol, a base brine of garlic, rosemary, black peppercorns and sugar in the saltwater mix is always in the walk-in cooler (tip: to help disperse the ingredients, Pandel brings the rosemary, peppercorns and garlic to a boil in some water, then purees them before mixing with the rest of the liquid).

Additional brines are made depending on the season, the meat, the cut and cooking method.

Liquid and protein

Most recipes require you heat the brine to infuse the ingredients. Rather than heating and then cooling the entire batch — an important step to prevent the raw product from spoiling — Huston recommends heating only, say, 1 to 2 cups of liquid with the flavoring ingredients. Then cut your additional water in half and add twice the amount of ice.

“That way you’re cooling and diluting it at the same time,” he says, a great time-saver.

Now, you need to decide what to brine. Paul Virant of Vie, 4471 Lawn Ave. in Western Springs, recommends first-timers keep it simple.

“Brine something that you are comfortable with. If that’s chicken breasts, just do that,” he says, adding that by using something you’re familiar with, the end results will be more dramatic.

Once you’re convinced brining is the way to go, you can experiment, says Levitt. His recipe for an Asian-style chicken, for example, would include a brine of soy sauce, fresh ginger, star anise and Sichuan peppercorns.

If refrigerator space is limited, that shouldn’t be a problem — you don’t need a huge container as you would when brining a whole turkey, just one large enough to keep the item submerged.

Keep in mind the container should be non-reactive; Tupperware would work just fine.

And, adds Virant, with Chicago winters there’s always the option of using coolers in the garage or under the deck “away from the critters” for your brining.

When cooking your brined proteins, there are two important items to think about.

First, be mindful of additional seasoning since brining does add salt. Second, if your brine includes a sweet component, that’ll affect the cooking technique.

“With any piece of meat you brine, you need to make sure your sugar content is appropriate depending on how you want to cook it,” says Pandel.

“If you are planning on pan-searing a breast with the skin on, you don’t want a ton of sugar in the brine because the skin will burn before the breast cooks through. But if you are going to roast a whole chicken, honey is perfect and it’ll caramelize well in the oven.”

Still not convinced of the advantages of brining?

“It’s really not any more work than marinating,” offers Goss. “People should open their minds and embrace the brine.”