Dry Brine vs. Wet Brine: Which Is the Best for Your Bird?

Everything you need to know about brining a turkey is covered in our guide, including the reasons why dry-brining yields meat that is more intensely flavored and juicy.

To begin with, let me clarify that I do not brine my meat. Ever. Not for my Sunday dinner, not for Thanksgiving, and most definitely not for a fast weeknight dinner. This post is about the reasons why.

I get the impression that, just fifteen years ago, going cold turkey was expected. There were no ill-mannered kids yelling, “DAAAAaaaad, Mom ruined the turkey again,” during the annual Thanksgiving ritual at my family’s table because turkey couldn’t be ruined. There was no getting around the fact that it was stringy, rough, and dry.

Then, about a decade ago, brining entered the scene. * The days of dry breast meat and extra servings of gravy were over thanks to an overnight soak in a saltwater solution. I, for one, welcomed our new moist-breasted overlords. My mother could prepare a turkey in the oven and have it ready to eat in a few hours. It was positively magical!.

*Or, more precisely, the method that had been incorporated into holiday menus across much of the populated world for millennia—including China and Scandinavia—finally made its way to North America.

These days, brining is something that everyone and their grandmother (also known as the traditional Thanksgiving gathering) has heard of, and an increasing number of people are actually brining at home before Turkey Day. But its not all pie and gravy. Wet brining has a few clear and significant drawbacks, so many people are switching to dry brining (a k. a. extended salting). The question is, which method works best?.

The Problems With Brining

There are two major problems with brining. First off, its a major pain in the butt. It calls for a large enough container to submerge a whole turkey (common choices include a cooler, a large bucket, or several layers of sturdy garbage bags tied together with good intentions to prevent breaking), as well as the ability to keep the contents of the container—the turkey and the brine—cold throughout the procedure. This may take a few days for an extra-large bird, which means you’ve either stopped using the refrigerator’s main compartment during the months you want to use it the most or you keep ice packs or rotating ice on hand to keep the bird cool.

“brining robs your bird of flavor”

Second, brining robs your bird of flavor. Consider this: Your turkey is retaining water that it is absorbing. This indicates that the additional amount saved in moisture loss does not actually come in the form of turkey juices; rather, it is just plain old tap water. That is a common complaint from people who eat brined birds: the bird is juicy, but the juice is thin.

I chose to compare all of the solutions (solutions, get it? haha) that I had seen proposed for this issue.

How Brining Works

Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s quickly review the fundamentals of brining. The basic procedure is to soak meat—typically lean cuts like turkey, chicken, or pork chops—for an entire night in a tub filled with heavily salted water. The majority of brines fall between 5% and 8% of salt to water by weight. The meat absorbs some of that water during the course of the night. What’s more, the water doesn’t evaporate even after the meat is cooked. It is possible to reduce the amount of total moisture loss by 20% to 40% by brining meat.

I cooked three identical turkey breasts to an internal temperature of 145°F (63°C) in an oven set to 300°F (150°C) to illustrate. One was brined, one was submerged in plain water for the entire night, and the final one was left on its own. All three breasts came from non-kosher, non-enhanced birds (i. e. the birds were natural; following their slaughter, they were not given any care.) After they were brined, cooked, and I measured their weight all at once.

Before roasting, both the bird soaked in brine and the bird soaked in water gained a good amount of weight; however, the bird soaked in brine retained a good deal more weight than the watered bird did. This corresponded to a juicier texture on eating. So whats going on here?.

Osmosis, the propensity of water to flow across a membrane from an area of low solute concentration to an area of high solute concentration, is blamed for everything in certain publications. Water in this instance travels from the brining vessel, which has a low solute concentration, to the turkey’s cells, which contain dissolved proteins, minerals, and other interesting biological goodies.

This theory is, in fact, inaccurate. We’ve already shown that soaking a turkey in a brine is not as effective as soaking it in pure, unsalted water, even if that were the case. Additionally, according to the osmosis theory, if you soak a turkey in a ridiculously concentrated brine solution (I tested the turkey in a 3%35 percent salt solution), it should dry out even more.

Nevertheless, I discovered that even after making the turkey unduly salty, a highly concentrated 30.5 percent salt solution was only marginally successful in assisting the turkey in retaining moisture compared to a more moderate 30.6 percent salt solution, suggesting that the osmosis theory is completely false.

Your understanding of the situation will be greatly enhanced by examining the anatomy of the turkey muscles. Each long, bundled fiber that makes up a muscle is protected by a strong protein sheath. The proteins in this sheath will shrink as the turkey gets hotter. Juices are forced out of the bird, much like when you squeeze a toothpaste tube. If you cook them over 150°F (66°C) or so, the meat will become stringy and dry.

By dissolving some of the muscle proteins, salt helps reduce this shrinkage (mainly myosin) In addition to absorbing more moisture, the loosened muscle fibers also ensure that more of the moisture remains in the turkey during cooking by reducing their contraction.

Sounds great, right? But theres a catch.

TURKEY! Wet Brine vs. Dry Brine vs. Injected!

FAQ

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