I’ve been brining turkeys for a couple years now (Cook’s Illustrated and their brining research completely convinced me) – and now I doubt we’ll ever roast a turkey without giving it a good soak first. But with all the grilling my husband does in the summer, I wondered what a brine would do for bone-in chicken breast, which has a tendency to get a little dried out. And so the experiment began…
Basic Brine for Moist Grilled Chicken
Brine ingredients:
2 quarts cold water
1/4 cup Morton Kosher salt (or 1/8 cup Morton Table Salt)
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1. Measure cold water into a bowl or container large enough to hold all of your meat (and at least 2 quarts of water).
Whisk brine ingredients together.
2. Add Kosher salt and brown sugar; mix well with a whisk until well dissolved.
Place chicken in brine to soak.
3. Rinse bone-in chicken pieces well and add to brine. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours (or as long as overnight). Note: You may also use frozen or whole bone-in chicken; frozen pieces will thaw in the cold water overnight.
I am going to try this – so hard to keep chicken moist when griiling – Thanks!
Another great recipe that the chicken remains moist is to mix a container of plain greek yogurt with cumin and garlic and marinade the boneless chicken (cut into cubes) for at least 30 minutes.I suppose you can use any chicken you want. You can then bake it but I prefer placing on skewers and grilling- awesome and moist!!!!
The whole brine thing has eluded me until now – thank you so much for linking this up to the Recipe Roundtable 🙂
Hi, I’ve popped over from recipe roundtable. 🙂
I’ve heard that brine-ing chicken makes it nice and moist but was always thought it was a complicated process. Not any more. Can’t wait to try this. 🙂