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Dispute about brining

Brendan_Lee_56950

So this article (http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/11/the-food-lab-the-truth-about-brining-turkey-thanksgiving.html) from Serious Eats basically is calling out brining as a fraud, saying all it does is make the food (turkey and chicken in this case) hold on to tap water and dilute the flavor of the meat. This counters everything I've ever really read or experienced with brining and I'm curious to hear what Grant or Chris or the rest of the team here has to say about it. I understand his arguments against it because of convenience but what about the ones about flavor and the tap water jab.

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DiggingDogFarm_65362

Well, that article is akin to the one a few years ago where Harold McGee badmouthed brining for several reasons...one of them was that the drippings from a brined bird were way too salty for gravy and the like...well...DUH...use less salt! LOL

Anyway....I find that I very often don't agree with Kenji and even though I now prefer dry brining of poultry much of the time as opposed to wet brining (for several reasons) his recommendation of heavily salting overnight isn't, IMHO and to my taste, the best way to do it.....mostly for textural reasons. Heavy salt screws up the texture.....in the case of breasts...I'd only use .75% to 1% salt and dry-brine with the skin on only to protect the texture of the breast.

Kenji "I tested turkey in a 35% salt solution."

Now, I'm about as far as you can get from a scientist...lowly half-wit farmer here....but I'm wondering how Kenji tested turkey in a 35% salt solution when a salt solution is fully saturated at ~26.395% salt?????????????????????????????

Brendan_Lee_56950

I think that 35% bit was purposeful to test the effects of a significant salt gradient and not a serious attempt at making it taste good.

DiggingDogFarm_65362

Probably, but my point is, a 35% salt solution is impossible as far as I know.

Brendan_Lee_56950

Probably just a measurement of salt by weight but probably never dissolved all of it, I mean I guess the reason why I posted it is because it all seems somewhat sensationalist but I am curious what the folks here have to say.

DiggingDogFarm_65362

" it all seems somewhat sensationalist "

Exactly!

I see that with a lot of his posts.

FWIW...here's the Harold McGee article that I mentioned above.....for those who haven't seen it....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/dining/12curi.html

"But juice up the turkey with tap water and salt, and its drippings become too salty to use."

Hogwash!!!!!!!!!!

Manfred_18311

What I excerpt

from the article is: there is a huge difference in brining a poultry breast without

skin or the whole bird with skin. This fact seems to be un-reflected in the article; skin

is more resistant to NaCl solutions than meat itself.

A significant

flaw in the attempt to falsify the pro /cons of brining, so on the end it’s personal

preference I would say. I dry brining my poultry when cooked, to smoke

poultry overnight brining is more or less mandatory for me.

borgech

FWIW (and off topic, sorry!) I think a 35% salt solution is possible if you heat the solution to dissolve the salt and then bring it back down to temperature for brining.

DiggingDogFarm_65362

I think that at boiling saturation is about 28%....upon cooling I believe that any salt above about 26% (depending on the exact temperature) will re-crystallize. The above 26.395% salt saturation is at 60 degrees F.

Tiparos fish sauce must be near the saturation point because it will very easily develop crystals at room temperature.

Matt_67991

Kenji is wrong sometimes, pretends to know what he's talking about sometimes and takes credit for things he didn't come up with sometimes. That isn't too abnormal though. In spite of his flaws, I still read his food lab posts. I did my Thanksgiving turkey like the chefsteps roast chicken, only without doing the injection brining. I totally will next time though.

borgech

I think it is possible to have "saltier" solutions than 28%. For example, many bodies of water have higher salt concentrations than 28%:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bodies_of_water_by_salinity

(Sorry for use of Wikipedia as a source).

I was looking for some NaCl in lab to try this with. If I find some, I'll post the results here in a little bit.

borgech

Okay, so I was able to get some NaCl. I weighed out 30g in 100mL of H2O (30% solution). I stirred it around for 5 minutes, and it all dissolved; a nice clear, colorless solution.

Upon researching this a bit more, Sigma, a chemical supplier of ours, says that NaCl solubility is 35.7% at 25*C (interestingly, this only increases to 38.4% upon heating to 100*C).

So, I think that Kenji was able to successfully make a 35% solution to brine his turkey (or chicken?) in!

DiggingDogFarm_65362

I believe that the ~26% saturation point is for pure sodium chloride.

I'm pretty sure that the salinity percentages in those bodies of water include other mineral salts in addition to sodium chloride.

borgech

Good point. However, I was able to obtain 99.9% pure NaCl in lab and I easily made a 30% solution. My guess would be that I could just as easily make a 35.7% solution.

DiggingDogFarm_65362

"I weighed out 30g in 100mL of H2O (30% solution)."

The solution is ~23% salt.

30 grams of salt

100 grams of water

130 grams total weight of the solution

30 salt/130 solution=23% salt in solution....correct?

DiggingDogFarm_65362

Sigma's example comes out to the ~26%

35.7salt/135.7solution= ~26% salt in solution

borgech

This is not how we calculate percent solute (salt) in solvent (H2O) in the lab.

To calculate the percent solute in solvent, we take the mass of solute and divide it by the mass of the solvent.

DiggingDogFarm_65362

But it's how it's been done when brining meats and the like for a very long time.

Common SAL brining chart here.......

http://www.meatsandsausages.com/sausage-making/curing/making-brine

"At 100 degrees brine is fully saturated and contains 26.395 % of salt."

There are even salometers to go along with the chart......http://www.alkar.com/download/pdf/Salometer_Usage.pdf

Hey, I don't know, I'm just an innocent bystander in all of this...but this has been around for as long as I can remember....and long before that....it wasn't my idea!!!! LOL

Chris_Young_80640

It's a bombastic article, which is what I suspect Kenji's intent was.

It has some misunderstandings and gross inaccuracies about the actual science of brining (the pH of cider doesn't denature proteins, that's just wrong; what it actually does is reduce the pH, which means changes the ionic strength of the liquid around the contractile proteins, which tends to neutralize the ionic effects of chloride from the salt. Net-net, 1+1 = 0).

His percentages for salt are a bit odd, and almost seem chosen to make his claims work out (cherry picking data?).

But beyond that his underlying assumption is that the only thing that matters is how much water we are gaining or losing. Brining also adds flavor-enhancing salt, it helps denature proteins in a way similar, but not the same as heat, which gives the meat a characteristic brined texture that some people prefer (I like it chicken and pork when it's not overdone).

So, while I agree that brining doesn't always improve the flavor of the meat, and adding moisture is not always the most important consideration, I think he over plays his point to be contrarian.