Ulog #260: 24 hour Brine Chicken
At my shop we almost always brine our chicken. If we don't it'll be marinated in a dry brine but most of the time we do this 24 hour wet brine.
Brining will absolutely change the way you cook chicken or any other meat for that matter as it breaks down the protein of the meat which tenderizes and boost moisture in the meat, giving you a much more juicy and tender meat when you finish cooking them.
A wet brine is basically submerging the meat in a salt solution which in it's most basic form is water and salt. To this basic wet brine of salt and water, you can go as creative as you want by adding any sort of aromatics like vegetables, herbs, or whole spices such as peppercorns, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, etc. For vegetables you could add onions, garlic, celery, ginger and for herbs, woody and hardy herbs like bay leaf, rosemary, thyme, are some really good herbs to put into a brine.
For this chicken breast recipe, I use fine brown sugar, salt, and black pepper. This is so that I keep the flavors as neutral as possible and still accomplish the purpose of a brine which is to tenderize and boost the water content in the bird.
For a whole chicken, overnight would be minimum time to brine your chicken. But for cuts like the one I'm doing, you could brine it for 3-4 hours up to 24 hours or more.
If you're gonna do any form of frying, I recommend an extra step of air drying your chicken another 4 hours to overnight so that the outer layer of the chicken is dry and will get maximum crisp when frying. This will be the ultimate chicken as inside is fully moist because of the brining and the outside is super dry and will give you a super crispy roast because of the air drying.
An extremely time consuming and long process just for a piece of chicken but it'll turn the humble chicken into a luxury dish.
A customer friend of mine mentioned that her daughter which is quite a picky eater finished her chicken breast yesterday in her stew. It was so good that my friend asked whether she could pay me to teach her how to make these awesome chicken breast as it's super delicious and perfect for her daughter's diet as she is a gymnast that needs her protein.
Here's a picture of chicken stew that I make. It's topped with slices of these chicken breast that I've oven baked for about 12-15 minutes depending on the size of the breast. I bake it in the oven at 180-200 degrees celcius with some butter and rosemary.
This method of cooking will give you the most amazing chicken breast you've ever eaten in your life; guaranteed!
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