If a fish has been swimming it's whole life in the sea, then how come we still add salt? Figure that one out 
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Never having been there, is this what Facebook is like?
After doing a domain search I find that most conceivable variations of "Do not dry brine meat," and "Do dry brine meat" .com’s are available for registration and await new websites dedicated to the subject. In the meantime I’m going to devote my energy to trying to learn more about all of the aspects of this passion we all share concerning cooking food with fire.Comment
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Facebook would have a lot of ad hominem attacks and name calling. CaptainMike , it took me awhile to fully delete my FB account because I had trouble staying away for the two weeks it takes. I would login and restart the two week clock again. Sometimes I kind of miss having it, but my wife and I had several mutual FB friends, so she keeps me up to date on anything I need to know. -
The snark is pretty limited in the responses here, FB would have had people from both sides jumping in and calling each other offensive names and posting irrelevant memes. All things considered, I think this is going pretty civilized by internet standards.
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A lot of bad science starts with, "well, I’m a scientist, so..." and don’t bother to challenge your own assumptions.Comment
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A friend of mine claims to be an expert on marriage cause he has been married multiple times. OK, a little off subject, but I thought I should just go ahead and pile on
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I dry brine out of convenience. I also think the difference is negligible and would be imperceivable to most people.Comment
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I have never tried wet brineing and until I found this site I had the wrong idea that you should not salt meat before you cook it. I WAS AMAZED THE FIRST TIME I DRY BRINED MY BEEF. I is a fact of grilling now.Comment
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Any time I apply rub to ribs, butts, brisket, etc the night before a cook, they taste better. I now know after being a member here that it’s because I was essentially dry brining the meat. That’s not to say a brisket I rub right before a cook doesn’t taste good... it does, but the one I rub the night before is almost always better. Just my observation. Most BBQ teams don’t have the time to pre-brine their meats.. which is why they inject right before cooking. As for Franklin, he applies a rub of 50/50 salt and pepper, which is a much higher dose of salt than what is recommended here. My guess the xtra salt "speeds up" the brine while cooking. Plus you get that extra salty flavor on his brisket with each bite since the bark has 50% salt. He also uses some of the best Prime briskets you can buy.Comment
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I think...
It's not really all that important.
If you are in the business of telling people the best thing to do, like Meathead is, then you have to endorse dry brining. To do otherwise would be just plain wrong.
If you are cooking your own food, in your backyard, all that matters is that it comes out tasting good. A hundred years ago smoked meat was probably pretty good. Before anybody brined anything, it was probably pretty good. Ribs were really good before anyone brined them. Hell, they're ribs.
Now, should the OP have come in here and challenged the orthodoxy? Maybe not. He titled his post "The facts against dry brining", and then didn't present any facts... a curious troll, to be sure. It would have been better to title his post, "I'm not sold on dry brining." That's an opinion, and that's what he gave.
But really, who cares. Meathead, you should care, but the rest of us? Meh. Lets open a cold beverage and cook some food.
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Alton brines his poultry. In his reload episode, he then puts it in front of a house fan at room temp for two hours to dry the skin.
When I get a chance I’ll do this and repeat with a 24 hour dry brine instead.
Will give me one data point...might take a while.Comment
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Apparently, for the chicken itself (who knows about the air) USDA says 2 hours is the max safe limit...
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I wouldn't want to clock it, Polarbear777 . If Mr.Chicken sat out 15 minutes longer than the 2 hr max, would I toss it? Moot point. I would never let a raw chicken sit at room temp any longer than the time it takes to prep it and get it back in the fridge or on the grill/smoker. For me, there are enough headaches with handling raw chicken as it is without adding air drying for 2 hours to the mix
. Some folks are more adventuresome than I, though, and their cooks turn out great.
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Right Though I may risk it and make it so I can A/B test my theory of whether the same exact result can be accomplished with a dry brine, instead of a wet+2hour fan.
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I was in a bit of a hurry with my last post so here's an update. Franklin dry brined 1.5 inch rib eyes @ these intervals: 48 hrs, 24, 12, 6, 4, 2, 1. Also 5 minutes and just before grilling.
Franklin states the results are CLEAR: "Steaks brined longer not only cooked better- more evenly and faster-but tasted better too."
His favorite was the 48 hour steak. It had a better crust and dramatic shift from crust to pink - whereas the others had more of a gradual gradient of color. And the flavor was the best - it tasted seasoned inside & out.
24 - 48 hrs were close, the main diff being gradient.
4 hrs or less had problems, not recommended.
All were cooked on the PK grill
Last edited by Larry Grover; June 24, 2019, 02:36 PM.Comment
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Nate be glad to reply 1. 4 years of chemistry and advanced chemistry
2. Internal auditing for Alcan aluminum which included labs and mills
3. First is not with all dry brining, large hunks of meat can benefit from it. Just don't make a blanket statement as has been made here that all meats need dry brining. I wet brine some things. Have a SS injector with 3 needles.
4.Fact show me any other pitmaster using the method for there pits and I might believe it is a valid method.
5.No new methods are being found all the time, but this isn't one. If you put salt on meat the night before or put it in the rub it will be absorbed. Salting meat has been done since the beginning of time.
6.Sure if I were not using facts from over 40 years of experience attending classes, and talking to champion pitmasters.
7, Most of the champions have restaurants of there own and would never use there Championship meat at the restaurant.
8 they all have cookbooks and would use the method if they believed in it.r
9.Oh, yes very different.
10.Sure all things are subject to revisions. I wrote this to allow for some debate.
Now let's get realistic and admit while Meatheads method is new, it is no better than salting a piece of meat having the salt drawn in over night. For meats like pork butts where they are going to be pulled and mixed with sauce an excellent rub with salt is necessaryt, the salt will be pulled into the meat as it is smoked while the rub flavors the bark.
I am not saying Meathead and the Docs method is wrong or poorly thought out. I just think it adds extra time to an already time consuming process. I have asked what it does, tenderize, no, make it moisture, no. So why waste 24-48 hours of my life when overnight has worked fine for 40 years. The salt penetrates to the center of the meat in that time.
I joined here to learn and to give my experience not to be badgered because I disagree with a method of precooking. We all have our opinions and each can be different.Comment
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mountainsmoker Have you actually BEEN to Franklin? Because I have. Have you SPOKEN to a pitmaster from Franklins? Because I have. They don't preseason because they don't have the room in any cooler. They have to trim, season, and put into the smoker, more or less. Have you been to Rodney Scotts? Because I have. Have you spoken to anyone who works a pit at Rodney Scotts? Because I have. Have you met anyone that cooks in Lexington, NC or ANYWHERE ELSE in the carolinas about this topic? -
My point, mountainsmoker, is that you can't use the fact that the "masters" don't do it as gospel. They simply CAN'T, logistically, for the most part.
The best steakhouses in the world probably can't either.
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Whoa! I take a day off and come back to a script for a "reality" TV show?Comment
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Denaturing of the proteins and protection against losing moisture due to cooking is another benefit. Especially for things cooked hot that are harder to catch at the correct thermal point.
Try Kenji's scrambled eggs that get the salt treatment for at least 15 minutes before cooking...no weeping in the pan and very smooth.
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mountainsmoker , a couple of housekeeping items before we get too far into this:
A. if you put an @ symbol in front of a person's name it will actually tag them.... making it easier for said person to know you responded directly to them.
B. It is Their and not There when to people instead of directions... full disclosure... I am not always great at grammar but that one always seems to get my attention.
Now back to our Q & A session...
I have some more follow up questions and observations:
1. Did your 4 years of chemistry and advanced chemistry culminate in some sort of chemistry degree from an accredited college? …. or.... was this just your preferred science elective through high school and/or college? I am assuming that since it was only 4 years that you do not have a PhD or Masters in any chemistry (or science) related field? … as a side note do you too find it interesting that some people who couldn't pass a high school chemistry class can make meth? That always blows my mind.
2. Cool job man... does Alcan supply Reynold Foil... a lot of folks in here are using that stuff... right? btw... do you brine the foil? if so what method?
3. I don't ever recall seeing the blanket statement that all meats need to be dry brined... Could you please reference where you saw that statement being made in the pit or on the free site by blonder or meathead? I think they actually argue a wet brine for some things and there is a wet brine recipe on the free site.
4. I don't think you can call it a fact just because you don't know of any pitmasters that dry brine... Have you talked to all of them? The truth is all competition cooks, chefs, etc... have different methods for prep from aging to marinating etc... Again a number of folks have made reference to Franklin doing it and talking about it in his new book (I haven't yet read the new book)…. And of course if you are using a different brining method... for example you may not want to dry brine if you are also injecting.
5. So since you answered that new discoveries are made all the time then you have to acknowledge there is a curve for accepting new discoveries, implementing them, etc... Yes salting meat has been done since the first person salted their meat... however the concept of dry brine has never been popular and has often been overshadowed by other methods... Meathead questioned that and asked set out on finding out why... This whole site came to be based on him being in a friendly little competition and getting advice that nobody seemed to know why they did it that way other than it had always been done like that... A lot of new discoveries are not new... electricity is not a new concept.... however there are still plenty of folks trying to figure out how to better harness, generate, and distribute it.
6. I argue that you are using opinions, techniques, old husband's tails, etc... and not facts... The fact is that they do it how they do it... That doesn't mean that what or how they are doing it is a scientifically accurate or sound fact. A fact is 1+1=2... just because you observe 40 1st graders give you the wrong or different answers doesn't mean that you can factually state that 1+1 doesn't = 2.
7. I think you missed the point of my original point... however... I have seen videos of Franklin competing (and getting beat). While Chris Lilly is the pork god of Memphis in May he also has moments of defeat. Again in competition you don't have all night or longer to dry brine a pork shoulder. I watched a video of Chris doing an injection before a big cooking event or competition and he was talking about how it is a way of doing a "quickie brine" since he doesn't have time to do it another way. Sometimes using a method or not using another is a matter of necessity. I'm would wager a bet that a number of these folks would consider a dry brine on meat if they had the time and space to do it since it is much less labor intensive and wasteful than say a wet brine or injection.
8. So because they have a cookbook that was written before dry brining started to become a thing (still is relatively new and not extremely well known outside of the pit) that makes it a fact that they would never do it? I'm pretty sure that my elementary science books listed Pluto as a planet and that I got a blue ribbon on my solar system diorama which included Pluto.... apparently the science community has gone back and forth on that a few times as well... it doesn't mean that I am now going to get on a soapbox about Pluto being a planet... btw... where did they ever land on Pluto being a planet?
9. Hope you weren't being sarcastic on this one... it means we found common ground if you weren't... yippee!
10. Unfortunately when you title something with the word FACT it doesn't lend itself to debate... because facts aren't really something that should be able to be debated because they are in fact FACTS! Now opinions, techniques, styles, observations, etc... we can debate... So when you say fact you are basically saying this is the way it is and there is no room for discussion... in addition to that your past opinion and lack of openness about the subject matter seems to suggest that you don't want to debate the topic anyway...
11. You never answered this... but are you a Myth Busters fan?
Aristotle said, "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
As I have said before... we don't all always accept every thought meathead, blonder, cantwell, etc... has... because hey.... sometimes people just prefer fall off the bone ribs... it doesn't mean that we claim it is a fact that fall off the bone ribs are the only correct way to prepare ribs.
tag you're it! (hope that wasn't to salty)Last edited by Nate; June 24, 2019, 06:38 PM.Comment
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