Pork Belly sous-vide / Brining in general

Joni_28567

Hi,

I experimented quite a bit with cooking brined meat since I've got hold of my Modernist Cuisine copy last year. I like equilibrium brining because I found it extremely frustrating the few times the meal came out oversalted when I used traditional methods with much higher salt concentrations. When I stumbled upon Chefsteps and the Pork  Belly recipe in particular the recipe made me think. For equilibrium brining chefsteps tells you to use 135g of Salt for 3500g of meat and 2000g of Water, which is a 2,5% saltconcentration. Now as I understood the idea of equilibrium brining the saltconcentration of the brine and the concentration that you want in the meat after brining is the same. Modernist Cuisine tells you though that very intense brining uses a maximum of 2% salt, while most of the times you go for something between 0,7 and 1%. According to what I tasted almost anything with more than 1% salt tasted oversalted. I do understand that salt is a matter of taste but can the difference be so drastic that different recipes call for saltconcentrations twice as high as others? Or is simply something wrong with my definition of equilibrium brining and the chefsteps pork belly's saltconcentration is lower than 2,5% after 72h of brining?
Regards

DiggingDogFarm_65362

Low salt percentages are recommended for seafood and poultry.

High salt percentages can lead to a cured texture rather than a brined texture.

In my opinion and to my taste, 2.5% salt is very high for brined pork belly when equilibrium brining.....I don't use that much salt when making bacon. About 1.25% salt concentration for equilibrium brined belly suits me.

Also, it'll take several days for the average pork belly to reach equilibrium without injection.