Brine to Chicken Ratios
When brining chicken breasts, should you change the brine recipe if you add extra chicken to the brine bucket?
We often call for brining to make chicken (and other lean meats) more flavorful and moist. Our standard recipe for four boneless, skinless chicken breasts is 2 quarts of water and ¼ cup of table salt. To see whether it's necessary to change the brine recipe if extra chicken is added to the brine bucket, we set up two identical buckets, each with 2 quarts of water and ¼ cup of salt. We put four boneless, skinless chicken breasts in the first bucket and eight in the second, and then we let both batches soak for an hour. Next, we cooked both batches to 160 degrees on identical pans in identical ovens. In a side-by-side tasting, we determined that the batches were equally well seasoned and moist.
THE BOTTOM LINE: The ratio of salt to water is the important factor in brining, not the ratio of brine to chicken. It’s OK to use extra meat as long as there’s enough space in the container to keep all of the meat submerged.
