I had a schedule switchup and am doing the roasted chicken tonight that I’d planned to do tomorrow. I still wet brine birds (my last holdout vs. just dry salting hours ahead) because the few times I’ve tried it, I’ve gotten pretty uneven results with the darks always being considerably more salty than the whites. Obvs this is user error, but if I can’t get it right, I can’t.
I did some searching re “quick”, “fast”, brine, and a few other modifiers and got a couple of hits that weren’t related to regular 12+ hours brine time.
One suggested about 10% brine (based on water-only weight) for 4 hours, the other almost 21% for 4 hours; my typical is 6% for about 12-16 hours depending on bird size.
I picked the 10% salt, used an equal amount of brown sugar, and boiled some garlic, herbs and peppercorns in it before chilling and tossing the bird in the brine.
I’m at hour 2 of the 4 hours brine time, and wondering if I’ve made a mistake in either direction. Like, was the 21% person right about needing it that high for such as short brining period? Or possibly - even with the 10%, will the skin and first ~ 1 cm of the bird be yucky salty, and the rest barely touched?
I’ve read some studies about penetration over time and with (some) testing of concentrations, and it seems that for the most part, I’m not very much able to cheat time.
