Your Thoughts On Brining

I've really become interested in experimenting with brining. However, Kenji Lopez-Alt has suggested that very little (if any) will be accomplished by brining proteins. Has anyone run their own experiments with brining and agree with him? Anyone disagree?

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Matt_67991

http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/equilibrium-brining

The video has a little A/B. There are a tonne of recipes on the site that use brining. Salmon mi-cuit, roast chicken, fish and chips, confit tuna, pastrami, pork belly etc. There is a clear change in texture that isn't always perfect, but it also seasons the meat.

Brendan_Lee_56950

I strongly disagree with Kenji there. Brining, especially with poultry is excellent and well worth the efforts. Equilibrium brining is awesome and takes the guesswork out of the equation.

Matt_67991

Either way, he ran his experiment poorly, and you should really take his advice with a grain of salt

tshewman

@Polymath, do you mean like this? Before brine 1390 grams, after brine 1456. This was done using a more traditional submersion brine rather than injection, but both work very effectively. The trade-off here sometimes is skin texture is less crisp as @Grant has expressed.

theultravisitor

Thanks everyone for their thoughts so far.

I don't think that Kenji is saying that nothing physically happens to proteins when they are brined. He would agree that proteins take on more weight. If I understand him correctly, he's saying that brining: 1) takes time and effort and 2) it's time and effort that doesn't do anything significant flavor-wise. To quote him:

"Your turkey is absorbing water and holding on to it. That means that that extra 30 to 40% savings in moisture loss is not really turkey juices—it's plain old tap water. Many folks who eat brined birds have that very complaint: It's juicy, but the juice is watery."

Even though he's talking about turkey specifically in this article, I've seen him make similar arguments about other proteins in other articles.

DiggingDogFarm_65362

It doesn't matter what Kenji says, what matters is your personal preferences and perception of the effects of brining.

I find that I disagree with Kenji a lot.

To my taste, brining definitely makes a positive difference.

I'm not going to stop eating limburger cheese just because hoards of people hate it.....LOL

Nicky_J_17040

I also agree with most of what has been said here....

It is a personal preference because not only is the flavor manipulated, but a texture change occurs as well.

Certain cuts benefit more than others. Timing plays a big part as well.

This first hit me when I was in culinary school and we brined regular ole' 16/20 shrimp for 20 minutes. That was it, but there was clearly a change in flavor that occurred. They were not salty, but any more time and they would have been pushing it.

I also worked at a restaurant where fried chicken was our thing. We brined for 24 hours, which sounds like a long time, but was perfect. For this particular application, brining was very efficient. The meat was moist and flavorful. And it gave us a bigger margin of error for over-cooking.

Brendan_Lee_56950

I'm not a big chicken/turkey person to begin with and breast meat is pretty unappealing to me usually but a brining step makes them worth eating again. The texture is 100% better and I think I get a more rich flavor from them because it's not just a seasoned surface.

DiggingDogFarm_65362

I agree...brining definitely brings out the flavor in what is, usually, relatively bland meat.

tshewman

@Polymath, Texture is subjectively better by most counts. Further, if one brines with flavors they also become part of that texture. So more than tap water. Difficult for one to paint such claims with such a broad brush. IMHO.

theultravisitor

Thank you everyone for your input. It looks like I'm going to have to do some of my own experiments. I just wanted to make sure it was an experiment worth engaging in. You all have convinced me that it is.

Brendan_Lee_56950

@polymath, it definitely is, i would recommend using an equilibrium brine so you can decide on the salinity level you enjoy. I usually shoot for 1.5% salt + whatever other aromatics I want to throw in.

nasv

I think one thing to call out is that Kenji suggests that seasoning the surface of proteins in advance can have a similar effect on the end product when compared to brining, and he likes this method better because it doesn't dilute flavor, and is also less effort.

I brine fish a lot because the brine is very simple: salt and sugar solution, and the fish is brined quickly. I prefer this especially because the texture of the fish is firmed up ever so slightly.

I also like to brine poultry but do it way less often, but mainly because I want more flavor in the brine: herbs, lemon, etc... and this involves heating, steeping, cooling, and longer hours of brine. So, in my home, I'll mostly season in advance.

Chris_Young_80640

I've kind of been avoiding this conversation, because it's really the tip of a very big iceberg. But I'll try to add a couple of thoughts to the conversation.

(1) Both liquid brines and dry rubs yield juicier meats and seafood. That’s because, even if there is no surrounding water to draw in, proteins are modified by the chloride ions in ways that cause them to bind the water in the flesh more tightly—as well as to resist the shrinking of muscle fibers that squeezes juices out during cooking. The flesh continues to swell and bind water more tightly until its salinity increases to 6%, and then it shrinks and begins to lose water.

(2) Kenji makes the assumption that brining is just about increasing juiciness, and then makes the point that this extra juice is just water, and then concludes that this dilutes flavor. But it's not at all that simple.

Flavor doesn't happen in the mouth (tastants and texture), or even the epithelium in the nose (aroma), flavor is a multisensory phenomenon that is constructed by our brain. Flavor is purely a product of our individual consciousness, which means it's vastly more complicated that cooks, chefs, and food writers make it out to be. So, yes, plumping with water reduces the absolute concentration of some of the tastants,as Kenji points out, but the added salt also increases our sensitivity to those tastants and aromas. The result is that even with more water, our brain may still pay more attention to the tastes and aromas, and decide the meat is more flavorful, simply because of the extra salt.

Then, you need to consider that the extra juiciness (even if it's mostly extra water) can cause our brain to find the tastes and aromas more pleasant, increasing our enjoyment of the flavor.

Finally, the change in texture between brined and un-brined meats also changes our perception of the flavor. I personally find lightly brined chicken and pork very pleasant. I don't like brined beef in general (corned beef and pastrami as an obvious exception).

My major point is that brining definitely changes the flavor, and whether you prefer it or not is very subjective. But, then, such a nuanced argument doesn't make for very interesting journalism. Kenji does a better job at that than I do.

Johan_Edstrom_5586

I think that was perfect and a whole lot more interesting than the article referenced

theultravisitor

I'll take a nuanced argument over interesting journalism any day! Thanks Chris.

nasv

Thanks Chris - I'm very interested in learning more the science of brining and how to really make use of the technique with any flexibility in the home kitchen. I refer to some of Thomas Keller's cookbooks often and I'm a fan of his brine for poultry; however, I'm always a little uneasy because I'm not sure how to take some of the variables: time, amount of chicken the brine recipe might expect versus what I have available, etc...

A lot to learn, thanks for the explanation above, and I'll certainly take more pointers and learnings here.