brining a chicken

Whenever I cook poultry – especially chicken or turkey, I brine it first. Brining adds moisture to the meat, making it harder to overcook into dryness. It also adds flavor, depending on what you put in you brine. It’s super easy – nothing to be afraid of.

The first thing to do is prep your chicken (or turkey). Remove the innards, rinse the bird, and make sure that any pin feathers are removed (this is more important when buying organic birds).

Bring about 12-16 cups of water to boil in a pot or electric kettle. While it’s coming to a boil, get your other ingredients together. Start with 1 cup of Kosher salt to about 1 gallon of boiling water. (You can also use boiling stock of any kind – vegetable, chicken, etc., if you really want to give the chicken a flavor boost!)

Pour that into your brining container (I use my big stock pot for a whole chicken), and stir with wooden spoon until the salt is dissolved. Add your spices – for this I added some bay leaves, some rosemary from the bush out front, some allspice, and a small handful of pepper flakes. But don’t rely on this – use whatever flavors or seasonings you think might be interesting: sage, lemon, peppercorns, cinnamon sticks, whatever you want.

Now add ice to bring the temperature down – you don’t want to cook the chicken in the water.

When the temp of the water is down, pop the chicken in and make sure there’s enough water to cover the bird. It’ll float, so push down on it to make sure you don’t have too much water.

Then add ice to top off the pot. The weight of the ice will keep the chicken under the water, which is important. It’ll also keep the bird cold enough to be safe.

Now, I just push the pot to the back of the counter and let it sit on a folded dish towel. That’s mostly because I rarely have room in my fridge for the whole pot.

Notice that as long as you keep the ice over the chicken, the temperature of the water remains in the safe zone (under 40 deg F).

If you’re really uncomfortable keeping the chicken on the counter for several hours, make room in your fridge, and let it brine there.

At any rate, let the chicken brine for 3-4 hours at a minimum. Then take the chicken out of the brine, drain it (but DON’T rinse it) and bake as usual.

This recipe works for a whole chicken, chicken pieces (including boneless, skinless breasts – a great way to make a really dry cut of chicken juicy and moist), turkey pieces, etc. It also works great on pork of all kinds – and especially if you’re going to grill it, keeping it moist over a very dry heat. Obviously if you’re brining a couple of chicken breasts or a handful of pork chops, you can reduce the quantities here – 1/4 cups of salt to 4 cups of boiling water, and then lots of ice, works well for smaller quantities.