After years of my curiosity being tempted by the brining of meats, I finally broke down and tried it for myself. And like all great revelations in life, it immediately inspired me to wonder how I'd managed to tolerate the simple act of eating food for so long without it.
Granted, if you're like most people who arrive home from work in a state of near-starvation, the idea of adding an extra hour of prep-time to whatever you're making can be less than appealing. However, if you're sufficiently on the ball before leaving the house in the morning, preparing a meat-brine combo in anticipation of later feasting is ridiculously easy and pays off like aces. So far, I've only brined pork cutlets (since they are notorious for drying out when grilled), but I've got chicken parts soaking right now, and am planing to work my way up to brining a whole turkey within the next couple of weeks.
Pictured here is a great dish we whipped up with inspiration from our pal Chaz Lewis, a recent houseguest on his whirlwind east coast tour. He arrived in true style, bearing gifts from his adoptive homeland (pure maple syrup and fiery-hot chili paste) and recommended blending them together for an incomparably tasty meat glaze. The pre-grill brining process only took about an hour and involved nothing more than soaking pork tenderloin cutlets in a large glass bowl containing 6-8 cups of cold water, 1/2 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup of kosher salt, and a squeezed wedge of lemon. When you try it for yourself, whisk everything vigorously before adding the meat, and then cover it up and put it in the fridge for at least an hour. And don't worry about your food tasting salty, sugary, or lemony because the process doesn't season the meat so much as it chemically alters its composition so that not a drop of juice will escape while cooking.
For the glaze, we eyeballed a mixture of the maple syrup and chili paste, and then Alex brilliantly suggested a small amount of fish sauce to temper the spice (which was considerable and had both of us chugging our drinks like fratboys upon first taste.)
When your meat has brined long enough, rinse it off in cold tap water and pat dry. Oil up your grill (or
broiler
) and cook the meat while giving it a few brush strokes of the glaze. (The rest you should boil up in a saucepan to drizzle over whatever side-dishes you're preparing.) Brined meat, as I quickly learned, cooks really fast, so be sure to turn it frequently over medium heat so as to not overcook it. The rewards of the extra hour you spent brining will be apparent the moment you sit down -- when our cutlery finally came into contact with these tenderloins, it was like slicing into swollen water balloons. Needless to say, all table conversation ceased, as this dish commanded our undivided attentions and reverence. Every bite created an explosion of juicy deliciousness which left both of us in food comas of the highest pedigree.
The flavor of the glaze mingled perfectly with the side dishes: stir fried Swiss Chard with a dash of white balsamic vinegar, and oven baked potatoes with garlic, the recipe for which was copped from a Food Network show whose name I can't remember. When these baby white 'taters were ultimately prepared, they looked uncannily (and perhaps unappetizingly) like the brain sucking bug that was inserted into Chekov's ear by Ricardo Montalban in Star Trek II: the Wrath of Kahn. (In reality, they were just small white potatoes with incisions made 3/4 of the way through, thin garlic slices inserted into the wedges, tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then baked for an hour at 400 degrees.) References to pedestrian 80s movies notwithstanding, these starchy treats completed the trifecta with style, panache, and bad breath quotients all firmly in check. Next time, we're using purple potatoes and never mind the turkey, I'm going to brine an entire goat.
We're gonna need a bigger grill.