My apologies to you my readers for not posting these past few weeks. Time and money have both been short so we have been relatively frugal with our meals, and I have just not had much time to sit and write. But we are over that bump in the road so, back to some interesting cooking tips.
One day last week we had planned grilled chicken, and while I have never had a problem grilling chicken, I have seen on several cooking shows people brining their chicken. Essentially, what i have gathered, is this; a brine is made up of water, salt, an acid of some sort, and whatever spices you want to impart into your chicken. Now, I am not a chemist or biologist, but from what I gather, soakign the chicken is a salty or acidic liquid causes the flavors you are trying to impart into your meat to actually diffuse into the meat because the outside liquid is more acidic or salty that the liquid inside. So I took a large pot, cleaned my chicken and placed it inside the pot and covered it with water. The next ingredient is sea salt, and quite a bit of it. I probably used 1/2 cup both times I have done this now. On my first attempt with this technique I used white vinegar in the brine for my acid, and I also added some garlic and onion salt. I allowed the chicken (a 10 lb bag of leg quarters) to sit in this bath for about 5 hours before cooking. I grilled the chicken as I always grill chicken, and I can assure you what we wound up with was the most juicy, best tasting chicken I have ever made. IT really was delicious, at least the parts that were edible. I am not very good at getting theleg quarters done all the way through, and some were still pink. Otherwise, brining was a success.
The next time I did it, we had boneless skinless breasts. The brine in this case had some lemon juice for the acid and I also included a healthy dose of italian seasoning as the chicken was meant to pair with some pasta Alfredo. This time the chicken sat in the brine for a good 6 hours. The results were very similar, The meat was tender and juicy and the flavor throughout the chicken was just delightful. There were no leftovers.
So whatever the science, brining is an excellent way to get more flavor into your meat and prevent it from drying out.
