Soy Sauce Instead of Brine

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that enjoys cooking.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

BchrisL

Senior Cook
Joined
Feb 17, 2008
Messages
314
Location
Northern Virginia
img_184145_0_9f2d3fbf3e1579de91cef9e7886b0b1f.jpg


Instead of brining the chicken wings, I thought to myself: "Myself, soy sauce is really salty so maybe I can use it instead of brine on those wings." So I mixed up a batch of 50/50 olive oil and soy sauce, cut up the wings and

img_184145_1_f85e77509aff60b9004b32ea23bd6eb3.jpg


put them in a Zip Lock bag to marinate for a little while.

img_184145_2_699dd2d1d668e526bac897d8a8575efb.jpg


They are raw here. They are dark because of the soy sauce.

img_184145_3_b6c5c3e58993518ed1613484aaf68e08.jpg


Here they are after two hours at 225F. I then took them out and basted them with some sweet/hot wing sauce and put them in a foil covered metal pan to keep warm until dinner time.
 
Looks good. Ya know one of my old chums who makes about the best Fajitoes I ever ate marinates his meat and veggies in soy sauce and water mixed 50/50. Not sure how the flavor profile would change as compared to olive oyl but it sure tastes good with the water. Imagine the oil blow aunt Myrtles dress up over her haid. Make a person's Cowboy hat spin around etc.

bigwheel
 
I am still learning about brines, but my impression is that the
salt ratio is extremely important, and it may be tough to figure
that out when you just chunk in some soy sauce. Please
tell how they come out.
 
CM is right, a minimum salt level is required in order for the brine to pump the meat with moisture, otherwise you are marinating

1/4C table salt=3/8C Morton kosher salt=1/2C Diamond kosher salt to 1 US qt of water


you can figure out the salt in the soya sauce like this:

used 200ml
from the nutrition info say salt is 5%
that's 10ml, about 2t of salt, count it as table salt

add salt from there as needed to hit minimums, add some sugar to counter the saltiness
 
Shawn White said:
...
1/4C table salt=3/8C Morton kosher salt=1/2C Diamond kosher salt to 1 US qt of water


you can figure out the salt in the soya sauce like this:

used 200ml
from the nutrition info say salt is 5%
that's 10ml, about 2t of salt, count it as table salt...
So I went and checked my soy sauce, it doesn't list salt like that. It says every 15ml (1T) is 570mg of sodium.

I weighed 1 level t of salt and got 8g (my scale doesn't do decimal g).

So, every 16T (1C) of soy sauce will contain 9120mg (9.1g), or 1 1/8t of salt.

With these numbers, if you wanted to make 1qt of brine with say 2C soy sauce and 2C water, the soy sauce would contribute 2 1/4t of salt. We need 4T of salt total so should add 3T + 3/4t of table salt (or 7 1/2T Diamond kosher salt, or 5 5/8T Mortons kosher salt.
 
no worries ... I made a flavor brine with soya sauce a while ago that I liked but didn't write down and scratched my head over this issue for a while, so it was a good refresher for me

one other thing to add, there seems to be two lines of thinking on what makes brining work ... it either pumps the meat cells with water or alters the meat making it hold on to water better ... I don't know which is right or even have an opinion either way but I know it does work

BTW, Bchrisl, brined/marinated, in any case the wings look great BTW
 
Back
Top Bottom