“Brine? What the heck is brine?” you mock.
If you’re an avid hunter, using a brine should be a part of your meat preparation repertoire. Why? Let’s take a moment to consider the meat from the animals we harvest. What do venison, duck, pheasant, and rabbit have in common?
No matter how you butcher them, they’re all lean.
And, no matter how you spin it, lean meat poses “gamey” flavor problems that causes people to shrivel their noses in disgust at the dinner table. It’s great that you put in all that time and effort harvesting an animal. It’s not, though, when it’s inedible to others.
Meat preparation is key. You already should be setting aside a little more time and effort to ensure you’re trimming off excess tendons and silver skin – if you’re not, shame on you. In addition to this, you also make sure that you can rinse off as much blood as you can.
It doesn’t end there, though. There’s a key step to help alleviate the gamey flavor and tenderize the meat. Enter the world of brining.
Sounds odd doesn’t it? After some careful experimentation, I can guarantee you that you’ll have better tasting meat if you add brining to your meat preparation (you’ll probably do it with most meat from here on out).
You have doubts don’t you?
Well, let me give you some backstory. Last year I was up at a friend’s cabin to for some duck and grouse hunting. Our first morning consisted of a brace of divers and mergansers – as many of you know, you can’t get wilder, gamey tasting meat if you tried. Well, unless you’ve had crow…but I digress…
Anyway, after breasting them out, I spent some extra time removing the tendons, silver skin and giving them a good rinse in the lake (no running water at the cabin). Then I tossed the breasts into a Ziploc with highly concentrated salt water and a touch of milk and put them in the fridge. The next morning I removed the breasts, patted them dry, cut them in little strips and sautéed in garlic, butter, and a dash of black pepper.
Lo and behold, they ate faster with our eggs and biscuits than the breakfast venison sausage that a friend had processed at a local butcher. They also were more tender.
“You’re pulling my leg! How could such lean, red meat be more tender than sausage?!” you chide.
Brining my friend, brining.
Take a look on google and you’ll see:
“Why are some turkeys dry as sawdust while others boast meat that’s firm juicy and well-seasoned? The answer is brining. Soaking a turkey (or a chicken, or even lean pork) in a brine – a solution of salt water – provides it with a plump cushion of seasoned moisture that will sustain it throughout cooking, which translates to moist meat, especially in the breast.” – Cooks Illustrated: The Science of Good Cooking
Just the other night I took brining another step through channeling my inner 8th grade self and conducted a science experiment with a fresh, goose breast. I wanted to see if freezing the meat in a brine had any effect on favor and tenderness. So, I cut the breast up in three equal parts.
- One piece was froze in brine overnight and then thawed in the brine the next day
- One piece was brined for 12 hours
- One piece was to be my control so it didn’t get brined or frozen
I used a Sous Vide to regulate that each were cooked at the exact same temperature for the exact same time. The finding was surprising. Not only were the two brined pieces more flavorful, tender and juicy, but there wasn’t any noticeable difference between the one frozen and unfrozen.
My conclusion: brining wins and it doesn’t compromise the meat in the freezing process (if you have to freeze the meat). Most of us have an excess of meat – especially when we’ve harvested a big game animal. When there’s excess, we logically freeze it for consumption throughout the coming year.
This is why I suggest that if you’re going to freeze your unprocessed meat, freeze it in a brine. It’s the kill two birds with one stone methodology: the meat is continuing to brine while it thaws thereby saving you time and hassle with having to remember to brine. By the time it thaws, it should be fully brined and ready to marinade or cook.
“Okay, so what do I need for brining and how long does it take to make?”
I’m happy you asked. The ingredients should be in everyone’s pantry and it should take about 15 minutes to make.
Ingredients:
– 2/3 cup salt
– 2 cups brown sugar
– 8 cups water (4 cups boiled, 4 cups cold)
Recipe:
Boil 4 cups of water in a medium saucepan. Slowly add salt and brown sugar – stirring/whisking until dissolved. Add 4 cups of cold water. Done!
Pretty simple, huh?! You can add herbs and such if you want, but I usually leave them out of the equation because the meat won’t absorb them as readily as the salt and sugar will. This is why I reserve them for when it’s time to marinade and/or cook.
Now that recipe yields 8 cups of brine, so that’ll get you through about 5-8 pounds of meat. This is why I always keep a refrigerated supply of it in a plastic container – it’ll keep as long as that bottle of Heinz 57 you have in there, so fear not it spoiling. Whenever I harvest more meat, I pull out the freezer Ziplocs, label them with a sharpie pen, place the meat on the bottom of the bag, pour in the brine so the meat is completely submerged, and then finally seal the Ziploc shut making sure there aren’t any air bubbles (minimizing freezer burn). Due to the salt and sugar content in the brine, the meat will take a tad longer to freeze than normal but will preserve quite well.
When you pull them out of the freezer, make sure to thaw them completely, then rinse under water and pat dry. They should be good to go for cooking after that – which should be a slightly faster process than if you didn’t brine the meat. One final note is to go lighter with salting the meat since it already absorbed some already from the brine.
There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. To brine, or not to brine, won’t be the question. Heck, you won’t even hesitate. You’ll discover that brining is the answer.