Dry Brining - Where To Let It Brine?

[JoeSousa]

95% of the time I salt the meat and put it on a rack in a sheet pan in the fridge. I like the air to circulate around the meat. Most of the time the other shelves get very, very crowded as I try to make room for the sheet pan.

If you needed to do it in a cooler I would guess if you got two blocks of ice, put them in the cooler, and then put the rack on top of those it would stay cold enough for a couple days.

[ecowper]

zzdocxx you need to keep that food in the safe range. So, under 40F.

[rickgregory]

zzdocxx 24 hours? Under 40. And just ziplock it. Drying things out, esp beef things, isn't that big of a deal. You're not dry aging it etc, just drying it a bit. The racks you linked would be nice if you do this a lot/enough

[JoeSousa]

zzdocxx Guess it depends on what you are dry brining. For larger pieces of meat (briskets, pork butt, turkey, etc.) I try to go two days but for steaks, tri tip, chicken wings, and the like one day is perfectly fine.

[Troutman]

You know what the REAL solution is don't you?

[rickgregory]

So, this thread got me thinking which is always dangerous. I get the reasoning for leaving birds uncovered in the fridge while dry brining. You want the skin to dry out so it can crisp up (I'm not sure if this is really NEEDED given a 350F cook temp, but... I see the reasoning).

But why leave beef or other meat uncovered? If the dictum that smoke adheres best to cold, wet meat... why would you want to dry the surface out at all on a hunk of meat? Why NOT just ziplock that puppy and be done with it?

[rickgregory]

shify - I get that for steaks - good point. I was mostly thinking of meats we're going to smoke for several hours.

[Spinaker]

Sitting in the liquid removes the even application of the rub on the surface of the meat.

[rickgregory]

Spinaker - ah. That's the difference... I don't apply rub when I dry brine since the rub doesnt penetrate. I dry brine, then pull, apply rub and smoke either right away or while the coals are coming to temp etc (within an hour or so).

[zzdocxx]

I was trying for sort of a yin-yang thing.

[barelfly]

Garage refrigerator. But I realize that isn’t an option for everyone. If I didn’t have that option, I probably wouldn’t do many dry brines and would just salt an hour or so before or just skip it.

I also don’t cover the beef when I dry brine, it is in the open using a sheet pan and rack. The stackable system you show earlier could work, just ensure you don’t have anything else below that could get contaminated if something were to drip.

[zzdocxx]

Yeah I'm basically experimenting or playing around with techniques here. These are choice and I usually try to buy prime, but the cost has gone up a lot so for $6.99/lb I figured why not. Maybe the dry brine would make up for the grade a bit.

Interesting how the salt on the exposed meat has turned the meat very red, in the direction of cherry red. I imagine that's normal but I just had not seen it before.

[UncaBuddha]

Cheap dorm style fridge might work. Small enough to put away when you aren't brining and don't want to leave another appliance plugged in. Shouldn't be too expensive.