No iodine, no anti-caking agents, nothing but salt. Also small crystals so it’s supposed to dissolve faster.
(Not that there aren’t other salts that also don’t have iodine and you might not even notice the iodine flavor in iodized salt anyway.)
I really don’t think it matters, and I’ve already mentioned fine-grained salt, but whatever floats yer boat or brines yer chicken, as it were…
I like pan fried chicken. The boneless breast often get dry. I’m looking forward to trying brining and getting a better result.
I’ve done it, but it rarely makes a lot of sense in the ways we cook chicken. Roast chickens cook fast, and if you use a probe thermometer, you won’t overcook them anyway. Legs and thighs don’t need to be brined, and I rarely bother with breasts (too easy to overcook, boring flavor).
Pork chops/pork loin are really where the brining bang for the buck is, IMO.
My general rule is if I’m doing boneless, skinless breasts, I almost always brine (unless the meat is already pre-brined, which some brands are – you know, the ones that say they’ve been injected with broth or whatever. That’s essentially pre-brined). This is for both grilled and fried applications.
Thighs I never brine. (And thighs are my meat of choice for most applications. I use maybe 85% thighs to 15% breast when I’m grilling or otherwise cooking. Especially for fried chicken sandwiches, because nobody seems to use dark meat for some god forsaken reason. They taste sooooo much better.)
Whole chicken I usually do not brine, but if I do, it’s a dry brine.
Brining does change the texture of the meat. Some people like this; some don’t. For chicken sandwiches, I like brined chicken breast. It absolutely makes the meat much juicier and gives you more leeway if you overcook. Otherwise, I like the texture of non-brined chicken typically. Make sure to cook chicken breasts using a thermometer to make sure you don’t overcook. My kids definitely prefer the texture and flavor of brined chicken breasts to non-brined. If you’re super sensitive to salt, it may bother you, but I’ve never noticed it tasting salty if done correctly.
And, yes, as mentioned above, for pork loin/pork chops, brining (whether dry or wet) is perhaps most important.
I’ve brined chicken and was happy with the results. That said, I think my best chicken is when it is cooked “medium rare” (slightly undercooked, then allowed to stand, covered). By brining the bird you can get away with slightly overcooking it.
I always brine our Thanksgiving turkey - in fact I need to prepare the brine this afternoon and get the turkey into the sauce this evening.
It does indeed allow me to get away with cooking things a bit longer to make sure the breast meat is done (though with the brine I use, that contains a fair bit of sugar, the skin looks blackened / burnt in places). I read an article about the science of brining, and basically the salt allows the meat to absorb more of the liquid. I’ve never noticed that the meat tastes overly salty - it tastes just right. The pan drippings are also perfect for gravymaking - since the bird absorbed so much liquid, there’s a LOT in the bottom of the pan (I put the turkey on a roasting rack so it’s not stewing in its own juices). I defat the drippings, and make gravy with a little bit of roux made with the fat. No additional broth required.
I did try brining a whole chicken once, when I first read of the technique and it was tasty; I don’t usually bother, since a chicken cooks fast enough at 450 degrees, that a substantial sprinkling of salt is enough. I guess that’s as close as I’ve ever gotten to dry brining anything.
Another technique, that I’ve done with a whole chicken, is to bake it in a salt crust. Basically a bunch of rock salt (5 pounds or so… and make sure it’s food-safe stuff; I once goofed and got something that was suitable for sidewalks, i.e. had gravel mixed in!!). And mix it with a little egg white (per the one recipe), and mound it under, around, and over the chicken. The downsides were that it was tough to check the bird’s temperature (I learned to stick the thermometer into it as soon as I put the coating on), and it required a hammer to crack the salt crust. The results, however, were delicious - incredibly moist, and did not taste oversalted at all.
As far as doing any of these techniques with parts vs a whole bird: I don’t see why they wouldn’t taste just as nice.
The only times I don’t brine is when I don’t remember to do so ahead of time. Unfortunately, this is probably a majority of the time on weekdays. 
I find brining when done correctly improves the quality of chicken. It’s really very little ‘work’ so therefore totally worth it. But yes, remembering is the hardest part.
The easiest way to brine/marinade (and I use this all the time) is to buy a bottle of cheap vinegar based Italian salad dressing. Just pour off some of the oil on the top of the bottle. Throw your meat in a large ziplock bag and pour in the remaining dressing. Also very good with Greek and lemon based dressings.
We eat a lot of boneless chicken breast, and it def makes a difference.
That’s a good idea. The store brand Italian dressing is inexpensive.
This is more of a marinade than brining, no? P.S., I’ve done this too.
I had a crockpot recipe that used a packet of Italian dressing dry mix to season the chicken. Added Philadelphia Cream Cheese just before serving.
Great receipe. I need to search for it. Shredded the chicken with two forks. Made great sandwiches.
Does it, like, melt into the meat as you shred it or something?
I found the recipe. I cooked it regularly a few years ago. I’ll make again now that I found it.
Seems like my original added the soup and Italian Dressing mix at the beginning. Keeping the chicken moist. This is basically the same recipe.
I’d start it early in the morning. Run errands and it was ready by 2pm to add the Cream Cheese for the final hour
This reminds me: if your recipe calls for a specific type of salt, use that. The one I use for turkey calls for kosher salt. One time, I did not have enough, and used regular iodized salt instead. I don’t know that the iodine affected anything, but the amount of table salt granules in a cup is different from the amount of kosher salt, due to the granule size.
IIRC, the turkey was not quite as good - there was likely more salt in it than usual due to that. It was tasty enough, just not as nice as usual.
Possibly if I’d measured the salt by weight versus volume, it would have evened things out, but the recipe did not give a weight measure, just volume.
NY Times article on the rise and fall of brining:
I don’t care - I’ll brine our turkey until they pry the salt box out of my cold, dead hands.
To expand on what I said above, even kosher salt is not the same. Diamond and Morton’s are different. Morton’s is smaller granules, which means you need to use about twice as much Diamond. Or just get a $15 gram scale.
Amen to that! I much appreciate instructions that give ingredients listings by mass rather than volume. Especially if someone assumes a fine grind for a spice as opposed to a rough grind, and that leaves out the issues with hurriedly reading a step and making the foolish teaspoon vs tablespoon error. 
I haven’t bought a whole turkey in a long time. IIRC my last one had already been injected with a marinade. Is that still common for supermarket whole turkeys?
Most turkeys I’ve seen for sale – the cheaper ones – do already come brined in up to a 20% solution of water, broth, etc. That’s why I don’t really see the point in brining these things if you are buying a typical commercial turkey. Read the labels.
Heck, I even sometimes brine wings, not for the tenderizing but for the extra salty kick.