When creating brine, one of the challenges has been how to get the ingredients to dissolve in the solution. While water may be the universal solvent, it works quite a bit slower at lower temperatures. Many recipes on here call for warm or boiling water to help the ingredients diffuse through the water. However, no one wants their chicken sitting in a brine that's as warm as bath water for a couple of hours, and I'd personally rather save my ice for some chilly beverages rather than filling my whole brining containter with it to reduce the temperature.
My solution is the same method used for the delivery of beverages and cooking liquids...from concentrate!
Take your standard brining recipe, but only use 1/8 to 1/4 of the water. Leave all of the other ingredients the same. We'll come back and balance the mixture later. Use warm water (or boil it, for those of you really bent on making those seasonings leach into the mixture) and combine the rest of the ingredients. Keep stirring and agitating until the granular ingredients have dissolved into the water and any herbs (if used) are suspended in the mixture, rather than floating on top. Pour the solution into your brining container. Now, add the remainder of the water required by the recipe using cold water and one or two handfuls of ice cubes. Mix well, and allow the cold water and few ice cubes to do their thing. It will require far less ice or fridge time to cool the brine, and the materials are just as well dissolved/diffused into your water.
That method worked for me this weekend. Hope this helps others.
My solution is the same method used for the delivery of beverages and cooking liquids...from concentrate!
Take your standard brining recipe, but only use 1/8 to 1/4 of the water. Leave all of the other ingredients the same. We'll come back and balance the mixture later. Use warm water (or boil it, for those of you really bent on making those seasonings leach into the mixture) and combine the rest of the ingredients. Keep stirring and agitating until the granular ingredients have dissolved into the water and any herbs (if used) are suspended in the mixture, rather than floating on top. Pour the solution into your brining container. Now, add the remainder of the water required by the recipe using cold water and one or two handfuls of ice cubes. Mix well, and allow the cold water and few ice cubes to do their thing. It will require far less ice or fridge time to cool the brine, and the materials are just as well dissolved/diffused into your water.
That method worked for me this weekend. Hope this helps others.
