Sunday, June 26, 2011

Brine!!!! The foundation of any slow cooked meat

As this is my first blog post I thought it would be appropriate to start off pretty basic.  We brine a lot of our meats at the restaurant, anything from pork belly, chicken breasts, beef short ribs, or roasts.  It is usually the first step in a long line of steps that lead to delicious meat (much like this first blog post).  A brine is simply a seasoned salted liquid that meat is submerged in for a period of time.  It is a great way to get the meat ready to cook and to ensure that it will remain juicy and full of flavor. 

The recipe that follows, like most of mine, is very generic and lends itself to personalization.  Try experimenting with liquids other than water.  For example, when we make fried chicken I substitute double strength iced tea for the water, or I replace ½ of the water with red wine when brining my short ribs.   

Don’t freak out when you taste this, it is going to be INCREDIBLY salty.  We want the brine to have this salt content otherwise it is just a water marinade which would be gross.  We are looking for the meat to undergo a chemical change while being flavored by the herbs and spices, not necessarily to be flavored by the salt.  I will need some of my scientist friends to further comment in on this one please.

As far as the length of time for the delicious salty soak my rule of thumb is to let them go for 24 hours.  However if you are brining say a small pork belly that has much more surface area vs. overall mass you would want to cut that time down a bit.  On the other hand if you were brining a large beef roast that had much less surface area vs. overall mass you might want to let it go longer to ensure that the brine has had time to penetrate deep into the meat. 

This recipe will be referenced quite a bit on this blog so you should have plenty of practice getting your perfect version down.  Enjoy!




Basic Brine Recipe

  • 1 gallon water
  • 4 cups kosher salt
  • 4 cups sugar
  • Big handful of fresh herbs (thyme, sage, rosemary off the stem, fresh bay leaves)
  • 10 whole black peppercorns
  • 5 juniper berries
  • 3 star anise
  • 5 cloves
  • 1 heads of garlic cut in half crosswise
  • 3 whole shallots cut in half
  • ½ small can chipotle peppers in adobo

    1. You will save yourself some time at the end if you put the peppercorns, juniper berries, star anise, and cloves in a cheese cloth sachet
    2. Combine all ingredients in a large stock pot on high heat
    3. let boil for 10 minutes then let cool until room temperature


2 comments:

  1. I can't wait to try this brine! It sounds like it will make for some delicious meat...thank you chef Graham!

    ReplyDelete
  2. one of the best ways to preserve prepared food. very interesting to learn and practice the recipe...

    ReplyDelete