Cook's Illustrated PanRoasted Chicken Breasts with bonein 2018

Siobhan Perricone

The original brine formula was: 1 cup salt + 2 quarts water

I'm going to answer two of your posts to this topic together here, Siobhan. As I thought about it, some things I "knew" didn't mesh, so I went out looking. I had to do that most annoying of things - change my mind. I misunderstood some of the mechanisms and some of the biology of meat structure.

For them as haven't been following all this, here's a site that details rather tidily some of the physical processes at work in brining meat.

Sorta. The greater the concentration, the faster it will begin, and theoretically, the faster it will proceed to completion. If it's permitted to go to completion. But if it's only immersed for a short time, the brine will only affect a small number of cells. It won't get to the innermost cells any more quickly, and may actually be slowed by the turgor of the outer cells.

If it were so that 30 minutes is enough time to get a true brine in a large half-breast still on the bone, a whole chicken shouldn't take appreciably longer. But it does.

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Seawater is roughly a 3.7% salt solution (5 ounces-gallon - 1-2 cup). A saturated brine is about a 26% solution (3 pounds-gallon - 3 2-3 cups). Culinary brines customarily run between 3% and 7% (1-2 cup-gallon to 1 cup-gallon). Some brines for special applications (brining salmon for smoking, for example) can run higher.

The concentration of solutes in the cells needs to be considered here as well.

Osmosis - Diffusion of fluid through a semipermeable membrane from a solution with a low solute concentration to a solution with a higher solute concentration until there is an equal concentration of fluid on both sides of the membrane.

Diffusion - Diffusion is the movement of particles from higher chemical potential to lower chemical potential (chemical potential can in most cases of diffusion be represented by a change in concentration).

But it's still more complex than that.

Here's a note from an online forum: ----------- begin quote ------------- "This is the explanation I found on CooksIllustrated.com: "Many have attributed the added juiciness of brined chicken to osmosisÑthe flow of water across a barrier from a place with a higher water concentration (the brine) to a place with a lower one (the chicken)."

"I decided to test this explanation. If osmosis is in fact the source of the added juiciness of brined meat, I reasoned, then a bucket of pure unsalted water should add moisture at least as well as a brine, because water alone has the highest water concentration possible: 100 percent. After soaking one chicken in brine and another in water for the same amount of time, I found that both had gained moisture, about 6 percent by weight. Satisfied that osmosis was indeed the force driving the addition of moisture to meat during brining, I roasted the two birds, along with a third straight out of the package. I would soon discover that osmosis was not the only reason why brined meat cooked up juicy. During roasting, the chicken taken straight from the package lost 18 percent of its original weight, and the chicken soaked in water lost 12 percent of its presoak weight. Remarkably, the brined bird shed only a mere 7 percent of its starting weight. Looking at my test results, I realized that the benefit of brining could not be explained by osmosis alone. Salt, too, was playing a crucial role by aiding in the retention of water.

"Table salt is made up of two ions, sodium and chloride, that are oppositely charged. Proteins, such as those in meat, are large molecules that contain a mosaic of charges, negative and positive. When proteins are placed in a solution containing salt, they readjust their shape to accommodate the opposing charges. This rearrangement of the protein molecules compromises the structural integrity of the meat, reducing its overall toughness. It also creates gaps that fill up with water. The added salt makes the water less likely to evaporate during cooking, and the result is meat that is both juicy and tender." ------- end quote ---------------

A food scientist I know said that the stages of processing start with the brine extracting liquid from the cells, then reversing and having the saline enter the cell. He said turgor was the clue there; he measured it during the process. The cells become flaccid then replete. He also said he couldn't explain why it did that.

With a high percentage saline brine, the meat will taste salty if fully brined.

There are two major ways I've used to handle brined meats:

1) Remove from brine, rinse surfaces to remove salt and immediately cook.

- I do at least 8 hours, usually 12 or so. Yes, some liquid will "purge," but a "pellicle" will form on the surface. A thin film that seems to reduce purge of both fats and water-based juices in cooking. I get a measured finished loss of initial weight around 7% or 8%, less than the 10% to 12% or so that have been normal with brined meats I've cooked immediately. Unbrined meats will generally purge twice the brined loss, depending on degree of doneness - more done, more loss. In the quoted note above, the experimenter got numbers in approximately the same ranges as mine. People who brine and smoke fish or meats routinely go the pellicle route.

Finely ground salt is roughly 10 ounces weight per cup. Brine solutions for home use are best between 5% and 7% - roughly 2-3 cup to 1 cup per gallon, although some people will go as low as seawater at a bit over 3%. The one in the original post was 1 cup salt + 2 quarts water - more than 13% solution - four times saltier than seawater.

A 5% solution will finally reach an equilibrium where the meat won't absorb any more liquid, and it won't seem salty in the eating. All solutions will seek equilibrium, but some will be too weak (3%) and some too strong (7% - for my tastes). The flavor improvement is optimal and there's small chance of messing it up. Adding sugar, (generally about 1-4 to 1-2 the amount of salt) lowers osmotic pressure slightly, effectively raising the brine concentration, but it's not generally enough to stop the process.

The reason, in this case, for the short time in the recipe is probably because they don't want the meat to be fully brined. If it were, it would be extremely salty. Net effect is that only the outer cells will be brined in that short time. I would characterize that more as seasoning than true brining where the whole piece of meat is affected.

And, yes, it would improve the flavor of the meat as long as you got some surface in each bite, but it wouldn't cause as much absorption as a lower concentration brine with the meat left in it for a longer period of time. So it wouldn't get the moisture and tenderness value of brining.

Zowie, this is a complicated thing... But it sure does make the meats taste and eat better. I think I'm ready for the quiz now...

No, seriously...

Pastorio