Replace half of the brine water with ice

The large kitchenThe large kitchenWelcome to The Grown-Up Kitchen, the Skillet series designed to answer your most basic culinary questions and fill any gaps that may be missing from your home chef’s education.

Whether you plan to roast one great turkey oa cauliflower head, a good brine ensures that the final product is tender, moist and tasty everywhere. Simple pickles are little more than sugar, salt and water, but you can use peppercorns, citrus zest, bay leaves and all sorts of vegetable parts to make things more interesting. A universal truth about brines, however, is that you need to heat the liquid to get the crystalline solids in solution.

If the brine is intended for meat, it must be completely cooled before its pork chop, turkey breast or group of prawns are submerged in those salty and sugary waters. You can wait for this to happen or you can use ice.

Of course, you can’t just pour a lot of ice into the brine; which will eliminate your proportions and dilute your flavors. Instead, halve the amount of water the recipe asks you to use, use it that volume to dissolve the salt and sugar and then add the rest of the water in the form of ice. The ice will cool the brine as it melts, bringing it to the correct temperature and volume.

You will need to do some math to calculate the correct amount of ice. Water expands as it freezes, meaning a cup of ice is not the same as a cup of liquid water. Luckily, one milliliter of water weighs one gram at room temperature, so all you have to do is count your milliliters, turn them into grams, and weigh those grams of ice. We use this simple brine recipe to illustrate:

Basic brine of myrecipes:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup salt
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 2 quarts of cold water
• 3 bay leaves

The recipe tells you to add all the ingredients to the pot and heat to dissolve the sugar and salt, then wait for the brine to cool completely before continuing. To speed up the process with ice, add salt, sugar and leaves to the pot with a single liter of water and heat, dissolving the leaves less.

Then add the ice. A quart of water weighs 946 grams, so grab a bag of ice and weigh 946 grams of ice. Add it to the brine, stir to dissolve and cool and soak your meat. No need to wait.