Replace half of the water in your brine with ice

The adult kitchenThe adult kitchenWelcome to The Grown-Up Kitchen, Skillet’s series designed to answer your most basic culinary questions and fill in any gaps that may be missing from your chef education.

Whether you are a big ‘ol turkey or a head of cauliflowera good brine ensures that the final product is tender, moist and flavorful throughout. Simple brine is little more than sugar, salt and water, but peppercorns, lemon zest, bay leaves, and all kinds of plant parts can be used to make things more interesting. However, a universal truth about brine is that you have to heat the liquid to get those crystalline solids into solution.

If your brine is intended for meat, it should be completely cooled before submerging your pork chop, turkey fillet, or shrimp group in that salty, sugary water. You can wait for this to happen or you can use some ice.

Of course you can’t just dump a bunch of ice in your brine; that will throw off your proportions and dilute your flavors. Instead, divide the amount of water needed for your recipe in half, use Which volume to dissolve your salt and sugar, then add the rest of the water in the form of ice. The ice will cool the brine as it melts, bringing it to the right temperature and volume.

I’m so sorry you’ll have to do a little math to get the right amount of ice. Water expands when it freezes, which means that a cup of ice is not the same as a cup of liquid water. Fortunately, a milliliter of water weighs one gram at room temperature, so all you have to do is count your milliliters, convert to grams, and weigh out that many grams of ice. Let’s use this very simple brine recipe to illustrate:

Basic brine from mine recipes:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of salt
• 1 cup of light brown sugar
• 2 liters of cold water
• 3 bay leaves

In the recipe, you are instructed to add all of the ingredients to the pan and heat to dissolve the sugar and salt, then wait for the brine to cool completely before proceeding. To speed up the process with ice, add the salt, sugar, and leaves to the pan with a quart of water and heat it, dissolving everything but the leaves.

Then add the ice. One liter of water weighs 946 grams, so grab a bag of ice and weigh 946 grams of ice. Add that to the brine, stir to dissolve and cool, then submerge your meat. You don’t have to wait.