Brining

What brining is

Brining is seasoning with salt a good while before cooking. In a wet brine the meat sits submerged in salted water; in a dry brine you rub salt over it and leave it in the fridge. Either way the salt has hours or days to work its way in, instead of sitting on the surface.

Two quite different jobs share the name:

• Flavour brining is mild (about 5–6% salt) and lasts hours. It is for a juicier roast turkey, chicken or pork. See our Brine for Roasts (Flavour Brine).
• Curing uses a far stronger brine, often with saltpetre or a curing salt, for days or weeks. It is how ham, salt beef and tongue are made. See our modern Curing Brine (Prague Powder No. 1).

Keep the two apart. A curing-strength brine will turn a turkey into something closer to ham.

How it works

Salt does more than season. At a moderate strength it loosens some of the proteins in the muscle fibres, so they tighten less as they cook and keep more of their own juice. In Kenji López-Alt’s tests for Serious Eats, a brined turkey breast lost clearly less moisture in the oven than an untreated one. A far stronger brine kept the moisture just as well but made the meat inedibly salty, so strength is about taste, not juiciness.

A dry brine does the same job with the meat’s own juices. The salt draws out a little liquid, dissolves in it, and is drawn back in. No water is added, so the flavour is not diluted, and the skin dries out and crisps better in the oven.

Only the salt, and to a lesser degree sugar, travels deep into the meat. The larger flavour molecules in herbs and spices mostly stay in the skin and the outer few millimetres, so keep the aromatics simple.

A short history

Salting is one of the oldest ways of keeping food. Salt pulls water out of meat and fish and makes the surface hostile to the microbes that spoil it, which is why salted food could be stored and traded long before anyone had a fridge. Salted fish goes back more than five thousand years, and by Roman times writers such as Cato were explaining how to pack hams in salt, leave them in their own brine, then dry and smoke them, much as a country ham is made today.

Salt cod and herring fed Atlantic Europe for centuries. “Corned” beef is named after the coarse “corns” of salt once rubbed into it. In Britain, ham and bacon split into dry-salted styles such as York and the milder Wiltshire cure, in which pork was steeped in brine tanks; most supermarket gammon still follows it (see Ham Know How). The pink colour of cured meat was probably first noticed because crude salt contained saltpetre as an impurity; later it was added on purpose.

Kosher poultry is salted as part of its preparation, which is why it should never be brined again. Soaking a roast bird in a mild brine simply to keep it juicy is a much newer habit of the refrigerator age, which caught on in American kitchens in recent decades and is now common at Christmas here too.

Types of brine

Wet (flavour) brine

The meat is covered in salted water, usually 5–8% salt by weight, for hours rather than days. Our standard is 60 g salt per litre (6%); for turkey we go a little weaker, at 5%. Brine for Roasts (Flavour Brine).

Dry brine

Salt rubbed over the meat, about 1% of its weight (10 g per kg), then left uncovered in the fridge. No bucket, less fridge space, crisper skin. How to dry-brine.

Equilibrium brine

The salt is worked out as a percentage of the meat and water together, typically 1–2%, so the meat cannot become too salty even if it is left longer. It needs accurate scales and plenty of time, and is popular with sous-vide cooks. We do not use it in our recipes yet.

Sweet or flavoured brine

Sugar, honey, maple syrup, spices or citrus added to a flavour brine. Sugar helps the skin brown (and burn, so watch it), but the salt does the real work. Avoid long soaks in strongly acidic liquids such as cider: Serious Eats found they leave the surface dry and wrinkled.

Buttermilk or yoghurt brine

Salted buttermilk seasons chicken and helps a fried coating cling, as in our Southern Fried Chicken.

Pickling brine

Salt water, sometimes with vinegar, for vegetables, olives and trotters. It preserves as well as flavours. See Olive pickling and Pickled Pig’s Trotters.

Curing brine

Strong salt with saltpetre or a modern curing salt, used for days or weeks for ham, bacon, salt beef and tongue. It keeps the meat pink and preserves it. Not for a roast. Our modern Curing Brine (the original No. 701 card is kept there as an archive formula, not for use today).

Already brined in the shop

Birds sold as self-basting, basted, “for flavouring” or with added water or salt solution have already had a salty solution added (the USDA allows up to 3% of the weight in bone-in poultry). Do not brine them again.

Ratios and times at a glance

Always weigh the salt. A spoonful of fine table salt weighs about twice as much as a spoonful of flaky kosher salt, but 50 g is 50 g whichever you use. For a wet brine, 1 litre of water weighs 1 kg, so a 5% brine is 50 g salt per litre.

If the meat has to wait longer than these times, take it out of the brine on time, pat it dry and keep it covered in the fridge until you cook it.

Turkey brines compared

We looked at how well-known cooks, BBC Good Food, Serious Eats and the US food-safety service brine a turkey, and worked every recipe out the same way: salt as a percentage of the water’s weight for a wet brine, or of the bird’s weight for a dry brine. Where a recipe measures salt in cups, the type of salt matters: a cup of flaky Diamond Crystal kosher salt weighs about half as much as a cup of Morton kosher salt, so when the brand is not given we show both.

What the comparison shows

• Most cooks who wet-brine a whole turkey overnight sit between 4% and 6%: Rick Stein, BBC Good Food’s guide, Kenji López-Alt and the USDA, with Nigella Lawson’s long, spiced brine at the gentle end.
• The strongest brines, 8–9% from Heston Blumenthal and Claude Bosi, are used for shorter times and followed by an hour’s soak in fresh water to draw salt back out. That is more work and less forgiving if the timing slips.
• The weakest, around 3%, are either short soaks for breast meat (Donna Hay) or recipes measured in cups of salt that are hard to pin down (Alton Brown, Martha Stewart).
• Flavourings range from none at all (Stein, Heston, Kenji) to a full spice cupboard (Nigella). Tests suggest they mostly flavour the skin and the gravy, not the meat.
• Dry brines from Ina Garten, the USDA and Serious Eats use about 0.35–1.2% of the bird’s weight, left for one to three days.
• Our brine page until now used 6% for 12–24 hours, which is at the strong end for a soak that long.

Cooks who do not brine their turkey

• Gordon Ramsay: No brine. Lemon, parsley and garlic butter under and over the skin, seasoned with salt and pepper. Source
• Jamie Oliver: No brine in his own Christmas Cookbook method: butter all over, then season generously with salt and pepper the day before. (A “Jamie Oliver turkey brine” on a fan site is not his and is not used here.) Source
• Raymond Blanc: No brine. Seasoned butter smeared over the bird; our Roast Turkey follows his method. Source
• Yotam Ottolenghi: No brine in his 2019 roast turkey: salt and pepper with an ancho chilli paste. Source
• Felicity Cloake: No brine: seasons well and roasts under butter-soaked muslin, using a thermometer. Source
• Delia Smith: No brined turkey found in the recipes we could check. Her site would not load for us, so this is unverified.

Chef Col’s turkey brine

A whole turkey usually needs 6–8 litres of brine to cover it, which is 300–400 g salt at 5%. A brining bag in a snug container needs less.

Why 5% and not our usual 6%?

A turkey sits in the brine far longer than a chicken or a chop, and its pan juices go into the gravy. A slightly weaker brine gives more leeway on time and a less salty gravy, and it sits in the middle of what Rick Stein, BBC Good Food and the USDA use. Kenji López-Alt advises against going much below 5%, because a weaker brine does too little, so we stop there.

Flavourings are up to you. If you want them, keep them simple: a few bay leaves, peppercorns and pared orange peel, warmed with the salt in a little of the water, then cooled. Then follow our Roast Turkey or Turkey Crown with Stuffed Legs.

Safety

• Keep it cold. Meat in brine must stay between 0 and 5°C the whole time, as in a properly set fridge (Food Standards Agency). Chill the brine before the meat goes in. A garage, shed or garden is not reliably cold; a cool box with ice packs is fine only if a fridge thermometer shows it stays below 5°C.
• Never reuse brine that has had raw meat in it. Pour it away carefully and clean the sink.
• Do not wash raw poultry. The FSA advises against it because the splashes spread germs. At turkey strength there is no need to rinse: lift the bird out, let it drain, pat it dry with kitchen paper, then wash the sink, board and your hands.
• Do not brine meat that is already salted: kosher or self-basting birds, any labelled pre-brined or with added salt solution, and gammon or bacon.
• Use the right container. A food-safe brining bag is the easiest (or a heavy zip-lock bag for smaller cuts): pour in the cold brine, squeeze out the air so the meat stays covered with less brine, seal, and stand the bag in a roasting tin or bowl in the fridge in case it leaks, turning it now and then. Alternatively, use a large pan with a lid, or a food-safe bucket or crock (food-grade plastic, glass or stainless steel). The meat must be fully covered, and kept in the fridge or below 5°C.
• Brining does not cook or sterilise anything. Cook poultry to the temperatures on our turkey recipes; the FSA accepts 70°C for 2 minutes or 75°C for 30 seconds in the thickest part. Brined meat browns faster, especially with sugar in the brine.
• Go easy on salt afterwards. Brined meat and its juices are saltier, so taste before seasoning, and think twice before brining for anyone on a low-salt diet.

Dishes that use brining

Is it worth it?

Honestly, it is a matter of opinion, and good cooks disagree. Brining can make lean turkey, chicken and pork juicier and seasoned right through, and it gives you a little insurance if the bird stays in the oven a few minutes too long. Overdo the time or the strength, though, and the meat comes out over-salted and spongy, almost like ham.

Cook carefully with a probe thermometer and you can have a juicy turkey without brining at all, as Raymond Blanc’s method in our Roast Turkey shows. If you want to try it, a dry brine is the easiest place to start: no bucket, no fridge full of salt water, and crisper skin. If you prefer a wet brine, keep it gentle, 5% for turkey, and stick to the times.

More from Chef Col: What is brining and is it worth it?