How to Make a Basic Brine

Hi everyone, I'm Chef Tom from atbbq.com and today, in tips and techniques, we're going to talk about how to

make

a

basic

brine

. This is a question we've been asked over the years if I want to ask my own.

brine

at home, how would I do that? So today we're going to dip our toes into those deep, salty brine waters by making a

basic

brine and then talking about some flavors. Now, in its simplest terms, brine is a salt water solution. What happens when you submerge the meat in this salt water solution is that the salt starts to work on those proteins to open them up to the point where the meat can absorb more liquid than it could before, so what happens is you suck something in.

With that salt you get some flavor and the meat has now acquired more moisture, so once you grill it, smoke it or whatever you do with it, it ends up juicier than it would have been otherwise. you would have put it in brine. So, the two things that every brine must have are water and salt, although sugar is also very common, and today we will add brown sugar to ours. Beyond that, the world is your oysters, you can customize your brine in any way to fit whatever. is that you are cooking for a poultry brine. You could use things like thyme, bay leaf, garlic, a little red pepper flakes or black peppercorns, and a reduced amount of sugar.

Today we're making a brine that's more pork and BBQ oriented so I've gotten more sugar in the ratio I've gotten some earthy things like these ancho chiles again the pepper flakes celery seeds which I love with BBQ some cloves and a little garlic, but what's really important when it comes to brine is getting the right proportions of salt to water or sugar and salt to water, so let's go over now a fairly common recommendation is to

make

a tablespoon of salt for every liter of water we're making a one gallon batch today, so it's going to be a cup of salt, so that's okay.

If what you are using is the exact same salt as me, but maybe not the salt, it varies greatly in size and weight, a table salt will weigh much more in a tablespoon than a kosher salt. So weight is probably the best way to measure brine. If you're worried about being super precise, I'm using one and a half ounces of salt for every quart of water, which works out to about a quart. one cup per liter now the sugar is up to you and you don't really need sugar in brine, but it is good because it helps caramelize the meat on the outside when you are going to cook it.

Brown sugar is great because it has molasses but you can also use white sugar. You can use raw sugar. You have some options. Now you may notice that this is not a gallon of water. That's because today we're going to do a little trick. You have to do it. have a cold brine to put the meat in, you can't put the meat in hot, so what I'm going to do is use half of my water now and the other half will be in the form of ice, so I can instantly cool the brine, so we're going to bring this brine to a boil and the reason we do that is just because of the flavors, all those flavors that we add in there, we need them to open up and be absorbed by that. liquid and the way to do it is to heat it if we're just making a basic brine and I'll show you here with sugar, salt and water, you can do it pretty much at room temperature and whisk until everything dissolves. so you don't have to worry about cooling it, so we just need to get it to a boil, we don't have to let it sit there and simmer for too long.

I'm just going to show you the difference in appearance between these two now obviously we have that chili color on this one which made it a little bit darker so we have our two quarts of brine set up here since we're making a one gallon batch , we need two quarts of ice, which is a little over four pounds of ice, so we're going to go into the brine bucket with that and then we're just going to pour our hot brine on top and churn, yeah, so there's just a few cubes of ice left. ice in there, mostly completely melted, but that's okay, we want the liquid cold and then you're ready to add your protein today we're going to make pork chops, nice thick cut pork chops and we're going to let them sit for about an hour, block that plate in place it, close it and throw it in the refrigerator now, when it comes to how long you want to brine your food, I follow a couple of rules, usually if they are smaller pieces, like chicken pieces or individual pork chops , that kind of thing just go for about an hour when it comes to larger proteins, say like a whole pork tenderloin or a whole chicken or a whole turkey, one hour per pound, however heavy the meat is, it's fine , so our now brined pork chops will take them out of the liquid. and then one thing that's kind of an argument in the brining world is whether or not you should rinse the brine off your food.

I definitely think in this case especially we need to rinse the brine off of this food because it's a pretty small piece of meat, remember osmosis happens when the salt water has been absorbed by the meat so we don't need it to be very salty . I think it's best, especially because of the amount of surface area, if you go ahead and rinse them with a little bit of cold water. Okay, so these rinse and dry a little bit here, we're just going to hit them with a little bit of barbecue sauce since that's the flavor we're going for and we're going to brown them, they smell good, so after a little bit of rest.

We'll just check the inside here, see how it looks, it looks pretty juicy, it definitely firmed up a little bit with that brine and it also changes that texture a little bit, let's see the flavor, oh yeah, super juicy, I mean, really important besides the brine when you are cooking pork, be sure to cook it to the proper final temperature. Today we stopped just shy of 140 on this, the carryover takes it a little further, that's the range where you're going to get really juicy pork every time and putting it in a brine like this just strengthens it, for sure when I try this and you'd be surprised, but you get a little bit of that breadth, it's not spicy, but you get the earthiness of that main course that was in that brine and that hint of clove and I think it goes really well with barbecue.

Thank you all so much for watching, be sure to visit atbbq.com to see all the products featured in today's video if you enjoyed the video. that subscribe button and if you have any questions or comments or there is something you would like to see me cook, let me know in the comments section below and let's be good to each other for more recipe tips and techniques including all three brine recipes What did you visit atbbq.com today? The sauce, everything related to barbecue, where barbecue legends are made.