Like dry-brining, wet brining enhances water-holding and amps up flavor by submerging the food in salt water. Wet brines take up a lot of space, waste a lot of salt, and don’t work better than dry brines in most cases. But I sometimes wet brine pork loin, chicken breasts, and turkey breasts because the process does suck in just a tiny bit of water and these lean cuts need all the help they can get.
In general, you want a wet brine in the 6 percent salinity range. The total wet brine should weigh at least two to three times the weight of the meat so there is enough salt to do the job. This means that if you have 1 pound of meat you should make 2 to 3 pounds of brine. A pound of water is about 2 cups. So you need 4 to 6 cups of wet brine per pound of meat.
Your container needs to be food grade and large enough to hold the meat and the brine with the meat submerged. It cannot be made of aluminum, copper, or cast iron, all of which can react with the salt. Brining bags or large zipper-top bags work fine. If you brine in a bag, periodically grab the bag and squish things around, flipping the meat so the brine can get at it from all sides. Place the bag in a pan in case of leaks.
The thing to keep in mind when making a wet brine is that there are different types of salt—table salt, kosher salt, pickling salt, sea salt—and they all occupy different volumes. But a pound of any salt contains the same amount of sodium chloride (NaCl). When you are making a brine, go by weight and you’ll never go wrong. If you don’t have a scale (and you should), use Professor Blonder’s easy method to determine how much salt to use, regardless of the type of salt, based on Archimedes’s principle of displacement.
Makes 1¼ gallons, enough for 5 pounds of meat
Takes 20 minutes
1. Pour 1 cup of the water into a 2-cup measuring cup. Add salt until the water reaches the 1½-cup measuring line. This will be about ½ pound of salt by weight.
2. Stir until the salt dissolves. Dump this slurry into a large container with the remaining 1 gallon cold water, and you have a 6.3 percent brine.
3. Submerge the meat in the brine and chill. Move chickens and other birds around to force any air bubbles from the cavity. Keep the brine below 38°F (in the refrigerator). When it is time to cook, remove the meat, flavor as desired, and cook.