The difference between a dry brine and a dry rub is how long it’s on the meat prior to cooking. A dry rub is often applied to a piece of meat shortly before being cooked. A dry brine is applied and allowed to rest for anywhere between 8 and 24 hours.
Also, if you want to indulge in culinary logomachy, dry brine is more of a method than a product.
Yes it involves using salt but you can also add other spices with the salt. Once applied you have to let the meat rest for at least 8 hours and for as long as 24 hours. Depending on the salt content you may want to rinse or you may not.
A rub is just that, it’s a product. Something you rub on the meat to enhance flavor. This can be done right before cooking or as some do overnight.
There is no difference, other than time, between a rub and this misnomer. And that time duration is so variable as to render any difference meaningless. Many rubs go on hours and days before BBQ goes in the pit, and many brines are employed for shorter durations. For example, when I brine salmon, the soak is shorter than when I apply a rub.
Same with other constituents added to salt to make the rub.
Obviously ‘brine’ and ‘rub’ can be used as nouns or verbs, so they are both methods and things.
A better case for ‘dry brine’ would be that it is rinsed or brushed off before cooking, whereas rubs are left on. But I doubt that’s what you meant.
I have ended up “mashing together” two recipes-one for the spices, from an article from Food & Wine called “A Chef’s Thanksgiving” for the brining spices and then using the procedure for a 3-day dry brine adapted from the Zuni Cafe Judy Bird:
Spice Brined Turkey-the Dry Version: (adapted from LA Times and Zuni Café in San Francisco)
Food editor Russ Parsons on the turkey everyone loves
The dry-brined turkey technique inspired by chef Judy Rodgers is a huge hit with Times readers.
By Russ Parsons
November 19, 2008
After more than 20 years of writing Thanksgiving turkey recipes, I thought I had seen it all. And then came the “Judy Bird.” Inspired by the chicken-cooking technique of my friend Judy Rodgers, chef and owner at San Francisco’s Zuni Cafe, it couldn’t be simpler: You just salt the turkey a few days in advance, give it a brisk massage every so
often to redistribute the salt, and then roast it. The results are phenomenal. Without the fuss and mess of wet-brining, you still get the deep, well-seasoned flavor. And while wet-brining can sometimes lead to a slightly spongy texture, with dry-brining, the bird stays firm and meaty.
Step 1: Make the Spice Mixture
In a small skillet toast all the ingredients until fragrant about 3 minutes Let cool and then grind fine in a spice grinder or very clean coffee grinder. Set aside.
1 ½ T fennel seeds
1 Large dried chile
½ T whole allspice berries
½ T whole black peppers
2 Bay leaves
I T dried thyme
7 whole cloves
½ T crushed whole allspice
½ t crushed juniper berries
I never feel like that is adequate so I double the amount:
Double Spice Mix:
3 T fennel seeds
2 Large dried chilies
1½ T whole allspice berries
1T whole black peppers
4 Bay leaves
2 T dried thyme
14 whole cloves
1 t crushed juniper berries
(I also use the spice mixture to stuffing, but you might have a bit of leftover spice mix generally.)
Step 2: Prepare the Dry Brine: (Be aware that this turkey stays in dry brine for 3 days so plan ahead)
Allow about 1 tablespoon of kosher salt for every 5 pounds of turkey. So for a 15 lb. turkey, only 3 T of salt. Mix the salt into the ½-¾ of the dried spice mixture (reserving the remainder of the spices to add to the stuffing) and rub the salt/spice mixture all over the skin of the turkey. You can sprinkle the salt right onto the skin; you don’t need to lift the skin and salt the meat.
Then stick the turkey in a sealed plastic bag and refrigerate. (I use a clear turkey roasting bag tied loosely at the top). After a day or so, you might see some liquid in the bag. Don’t worry. Salt naturally pulls moisture from meat. Give the turkey a light massage through the bag to make sure the salt is distributed evenly and stick it back in the fridge.
After three days, you’ll see that the moisture has been reabsorbed by the meat, pulling the salt with it. At this point, on day 3, you can remove the turkey from the bag, put it on a plate and let it dry in the refrigerator for several hours (the fan in the refrigerator works very well as a skin-dryer).
Then you roast it. Start at 450 degrees to get the browning going, then after a half-hour or so, reduce to 350 to cook through. Roast it until the breast meat shows a temperature of 165 degrees-then remove from the oven and let rest 20-30 minutes before carving. (This is important since the meat keeps cooking and also allows the juices to reabsorb back into the meat.)
To Stuff or Not to Stuff
Most Foodie sources now think stuffing the bird is evil because it increases the cooking time to the point where the breast meat is overcooked. But since I love stuffing inside the bird, I have compromised and now stuff the neck cavity and not the body cavity.
That’s an interesting mixture of spices. Do you find the dried chili area any actual great to your turkey? And where do you find a seal-able bag for your turkey??
I spatchcock turkey, so it will lie flat on my tray but I’m surprised that there still is a lot of liquid left on the tray from the brining. I wonder if another method might promote better re-absorption.
I bought these last year. They worked well, but it was not an aqueous brine. Not that there’s anything wrong with that@kaleokahu .
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I do a 24 hour dry brine on a half breast with Tony Chachere’s and cook it with cut up apples, lemons, and onions. Easy, very tasty, and makes your house smell wonderful!
@kobuta Same here, meats always salted and flavored, and usually marinated too, in advance.
Fish too, but for a shorter period. I think these are pretty common techniques in asian and middle eastern cultures, but when they travel west, maybe they need rebranding with special terms (and endless analysis) to catch hold?
My aunt uses salt, (less) sugar, pepper, and either thyme, rosemary, and sage separately, or HdP instead of those.
Then, in the cavity before roasting, a cut lemon, sometimes a clementine too if she thinks it’s going sideways on the counter, maybe a quartered onion, and generous sprigs of sage, thyme, and rosemary, all held in with a slice or two of bread. Butter rubbed all over (she used to go under the skin with it, but when you air out the bird, it’s hard to get under the skin).
For chicken, I use a little bit of minced/ground fresh ginger and garlic massaged inside and out with the salt and pepper. Lemon juice and butter at the end.
Smoked paprika gives a lovely flavor with the fat, but is a very specific flavor profile that can throw some people off if they want a “straightforward” thanksgiving turkey (ditto the garlic and ginger).
I think HdP is a nice twist that is close enough to what people expect as traditional, but with a few more “I can’t quite place that” flavors.
Well, Larousse Gastronomique is close. Authoritative, and their committees police their terminology.
‘Dry brine’ is an oxymoronic throwback to Ray “sauteeing” his catered rutabegas in chicken broth.
A college roommate and I were poor, and always short on spirits, mixer and ice. One thirsty night all we could find was some rotgut gin and a tub of Tang powder. We christened our tepid cocktail the “Chocolate Vodka Icy”, and that’s what our circle calls it still. Usage doesn’t make it right…
There are plenty of culinary examples, too, e.g., ‘Russe’ used for any old saucepan, when in fact it is a high-walled saucepan of the Russian style.
Were the proportions similar to those in the “dry brine” methods? My “hyphenated American” family salted and flavored proteins back in the days before the internet, but I don’t recall it drawing out enough liquid to be visible, and waiting for it to re-absorb. I read of that first as “The Judy Bird”, although in her cookbook, IIRC, she refers only to pre-salting.
I recall a pre-internet history of macerating fruits, but they did not re-absorb the liquid.
"…special terms (and endless analysis) "
Fixed this; thank you @Saregama
My daughter would say this is a “first world problem”, but where would the Internet be without “problems” like this?
First world problem, I think you mean. (The “third world” just goes ahead and does it because their mother and grandmother and great grandmother did it like that — the first world sells “turmeric lattes” at Starbucks aftet uniformly-abhorred-by-all-indian-children haldi milk has been sufficiently analyzed.)
When dinner was steak night on the charcoal grill, my mother would take the steak out of the fridge hours before grilling time, liberally coat it with salt, coarse pepper, and granulated garlic, and let it sit basically until it was room temp. I have no idea where she picked up that technique. We’re talking 1950s, and she was from the Deep South, so she had no experience with rare or medium rare steak either, which is what we had. It was pretty perfect.
You know more sophisticated people than I do. No one I know would use penultimate (other than me, and I would skip it to save being mocked by them… so maybe I need some new people )
— the first world sells “turmeric lattes” at Starbucks aftet uniformly-abhorred-by-all-indian-children haldi milk has been sufficiently analyzed.)
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