Fire It Up - Andrew Schloss [12]
Brines
Brining adds moisture and flavor to food. Grilling directly over flame is an intense form of cooking that tends to dehydrate low-moisture, low-fat, delicate ingredients like lean pork and white-meat poultry. Soaking these meats in 5 percent salt brine for as little as 1 hour before grilling can make them noticeably juicier. For the simplest brine, dissolve about 2 tablespoons salt and 1 tablespoon sugar in 2½ cups water or another flavored liquid.
Brines work in two ways: First, salt loosens the muscle fibers that cause muscles to contract. Brine-soaked meat therefore becomes noticeably softer and, if not overcooked, it will taste more tender. Second, salt causes the protein molecules to unfold, exposing more bonding sites for water. That means that brined meat can absorb as much as 10 percent of the moisture from the brine. When meat cooks, it naturally loses some juices (about 20 percent), but by bulking up the moisture in meat through brining, you can effectively cut the net loss of juices by half. The result: juicier-tasting pork, chicken, and other food from your grill.
Brines act as a seasoning as well. When water from the brine enters the meat, any flavorful components from herbs, spices, or flavored liquids dissolved in the brine are also absorbed deep into the meat. And if brine contains about 5 percent alcohol, its flavoring abilities are greatly enhanced.
Meats absorb brine from the outside in, so the fibers closest to the surface get most of the benefits. But it’s the surface that dehydrates most during grilling, so even a short period of brining can make your meat noticeably juicier and more flavorful.
Incomplete brining yields less juicy results, but brining for too long poses far greater problems. Overexposing meats to the salt in brine makes the protein coagulate, which forces moisture out of the muscle tissue. So you end up with meat that is even drier than it was before it went into the brine. This potential drawback makes it especially important to monitor your brining times. The brine’s strength and the food’s density, size, and shape all affect brining time. Use the chart below as a guide.
Marinades
Marinades are like brines, but they do the job with acid rather than salt. Most ingredients contain acid, but they vary widely in acidity and as a result, so do marinades. Vinegar, citrus or other fruit juice, wine or other alcohols, buttermilk, yogurt, tea, or coffee each bring different flavors and textures to a marinade, but chemically they all work the same way.
Just like salt in brines, acids in marinades open the structure of proteins by disrupting their chemical bonds. When a piece of fish or meat is submerged in an acidic marinade, its fibers tenderize, it takes on moisture, and it forms bonds with flavorful elements in the solution. Because acids are less reactive than salts, brines are more effective than marinades at accomplishing these tasks. Unless you inject a marinade deep into the interior of an ingredient, it is difficult for the marinade to have any tenderizing effect deeper than a fraction of an inch without making the finished dish taste overly sour.
As with brines, it is possible to marinate food for too long. When proteins are overexposed to acids, they will stop absorbing liquid from the marinade, and will eventually begin to release juices from the muscle fibers. When this happens, the meat will start to look cooked (brown, dry, and firm) and the marinade will start to become cloudy. Remove the food from the marinade before this starts to happen. If you see that an ingredient is starting to overmarinate or overbrine, simply remove it from the liquid, pat it dry, cover it with plastic wrap or slip it in a zipper-lock bag, and refrigerate it until you are ready to light up the grill. Use the chart below for approximate marinating times.
Mops
A mop is a flavorful