Brining chicken,etc prior to cooking

[wallie]

While browsing the internet the other night I came across a cookery blog in one of the recipes the blogger recommended a better method of brining before cooking.
This type of brining normally just a quick brine of salt, flavoring and water for a short time just before cooking. Not our type of brining for bacon etc.
It recommended doing the brining in a Vacuum jar, which apparently are available in the good old USA.
So I suppose you would be able to use the vacuum jars you get when purchasing a Foodsaver.
The theory here being that the brine and flavoring penetrated the meat more and quicker, for example a small whole chicken 15mins instead of 2 hours.
I would like to know if anyone has any knowedge or suggestions on this.
Any food scientists out there!

Cheers
wallie

[saucisson]

It sounds similar to vac packing to speed up a marinade, but I guess trying to vac pack a chicken in brine would be rather messy.

Dave

[wittdog]

The trick is to hang the bag over the counter...it helps to have two people involved

[RodinBangkok]

Raw meat brining, mostly pork or chicken is a way to maintain moisture by balancing the salt content within the cells of the raw meat (osmosis). It allows a slightly higher temperature to be used to cook the meat without the cells bursting, thus loosing moisture. Small cuts should be brined in a 1 to 16 solution of salt and water for about 2-3 hours, whole birds such as turkeys can be brined 12-24 hours. But you still need to insure you do not over cook the meat. All my chicken and pork cuts used for individual serving use are brined. Whole birds should not be re-brined if they are already done by the supplier in the case of many turkeys that are already pumped full of nasties, check the label, or buy farm fresh.

You can vacuum pump meats, but mostly done to increase sell weight by forcing water into the meat, not really any improvement on flavor or cooked moisture content, just allows the seller to increase the weight by forcing water into the meat.