Toughness from brining?

[Salami Student]

Recently I have had a couple issues with pork loin chops and skinlesss\boneless chicken breasts. After many years of brining with the same
technique the meat is coming out somewhat tough and rubbery. Any insights?

[mitchamus]

How are you cooking them after brining?

I would suggest maybe it's the particular animal, or a cooking issue rather than a brining problem?

What salt percentage is your brine?

[Oddwookiee]

No offense, but barring a low-quality piece of meat, I'm willing to bet this is a cooking issue. I have been brining as well as dry salting both boneless loins and boneless/skinless chicken breasts, with a lot of different brines and salt content levels, and never had them come up too tough.

[Salami Student]

I dont think it is a cooking issue as times and temp have not changed.

The salt concentration is 1 cup salt for every 4 liters of water.
I rarely make the brine myself and I wonder
if the water may have evaporated therefore increasing the salinity. Perhaps an instrument to measure salt content would help with consistency?
The chicken breasts in this case were also frozen after brining and then left in the fridge when thawed uncovered for a couple of days. This caused the breasts to have a pellicule. I think now this caused the toughness.

[Oddwookiee]

It's definitely not the salt- that's a very low concentration brine. Without doing any calculations, I'd guess that's about a 40% - 45% solution, if not considerably lower. There's no way evaporation could possibly account for an increase in salinity. In fact, I'll say that if it was oversalting responsible for the meat getting tough, then the finished product would have had a horribly salty flavor after cooking that would be absolutely unmistakable.

The uncovered thawing is all I can think of to be your culprit. Chicken will lose moisture at a rate you wouldn't believe if left uncovered in the fridge with the air circulation sucking moisture off the surface. Add in that most chicken breasts have more surface area for the weight of the cut as compared to a red meat and they lose water weight very easily. Freezing after brining will not do it- I do this with beef, pork and chicken at work all the time.

As for the pork, I'm at a loss. Exactly where on the loin are the chops from, what breed of hog is it, was it a dry- or slop-fed hog, is it a grocery store, small meat shop or small farm hog, bone in or boneless chops, and what is the exact internal temperature you're cooking to? I don't doubt you cooking procedures, but in 24 years cutting meat, I've never heard of salt making a loin chop tough. It will of course facilitate fluid transfer, but in a wet brine the water transfer will even itself out, especially if you brine as cut chops and not as a full loin.

[Salami Student]

Good insights.

The pork was a heritage breed, Berkshire.

How would the location of the loin chop on the animal affect the tenderness of the meat?

This particular cut is bone in and I guess you could say it is like a pork t-bone in a sense with a little bit of tenderloin on one side of the bone.

We aim for 124-130F but it does get over cooked sometimes, unfortunately.

One thing I have experienced in the past with this particular small farm, cut, and brining time is that the meat can be quite forgiving and still tender
even if overcooked accidentally.

Could it be the meat was never aged properly?

thanks

[Oddwookiee]

Chops from far forward on the loin where the muscle dives into the shoulder can be tougher, or far in the back where the sirloin marries to the loin, but it sounds like you have a good cut of chop, that shouldn't be a problem. In my experience, I will not age pork the way beef is aged- pork is a very touchy meat as far as how it reacts to bacteria, it will go over much faster then a beef carcass will. In a perfect world, I'll hang a pork 24 hours to get it chilled through, then it goes onto the block. They can be hung up to a week, but much more then that and it risks getting slimy. I don't know industry standards across the US, much less in Europe, but I'm willing to bet pork is rarely aged. In smaller shops I can't say, but I haven't seen much about aging pork to improve it. If I'm wrong there, I'd appreciate being pointed in a direction of something to read, I enjoy learning anything I can about the entire meat universe.

The temperature is a smidge lower then I cook, but I cook for resale so I have to be a little less flexible. I take smoked loins & hams to 144-146, but that's a fully cooked level. You're definitely not overcooking.

It sounds like you did everything right from start to finish, so it may be just one of those things. Maybe the hog had a backache the day it got slaughtered, who knows. Sometimes even when everything is done perfectly, it fails. If it's a constant issue, try taking a chop and just cooking it like a fresh pork chop for dinner and see how it reacts. If it's tough both ways, then you know it's the meat and not the process. If it's the process, try changing brine recipes or making it yourself- maybe the brine manufacturer got bought out or changed their process somehow.

[Salami Student]

Thanks! That is great advice. I haven't had any issues this week at all, so perhaps it was a bad batch...