How much brine for a small cut of meat? Need answer fast?

Cafe Society
1

I know there are a lot of meat gurus & fabulous cooks on the boards here, so I had a couple of quick questions about brining.

I never brine anything but my Thanksgiving turkey, and it all comes out fine. However, that thing’s huge & the brine recipe (from Rick, I think) I use is correspondingly large.

So, how do you scale it down? Do you use different brines for different kinds of meat?

I’d love to know more about all kinds of brining, really, but the question is prompted by the bit more than half-pound pork tongue I have thawing in the fridge. I want to start brining it tonight, and I’ll use some sort of variant on my turkey brine if I need to/should, but I was curious. And I’m clueless about scaling downward.

“Need answer fast?” is kind of a joke, because I will try to wing it if I don’t get a fast answer and that’ll probably be fine, but I’d love a fast answer or two.

2

Scaling it down shouldn’t be a problem, just keep the same proportions and you’ll be fine.

3

Okay, good. That was my original inclination. Thanks!

4

I don’t know if you add any extra flavors to the brine, but I find that brown sugar or molasses goes well with pork. I use about half the amount of sugar as the salt. Other pork friendly flavors are whole allspice and rosemary, both just slightly cracked/bruised.

5

And cut back on the time, too. If a 14lb turkey is in the brine for 12 hours, a smaller cut needs to be in it for a couple of hours and shrimp or pork chops only need half an hour.

I’d go with adding extra flavors. Second brown sugar or molasses with herbs/spices.

6

Plain salt brine for poultry (though I have experimented with flavored brines).
2 parts salt, 1 part sugar for pork (doesn’t make it taste sweet, just porkier . . . if that makes sense).

CMC fnord!

7

Thanks, all!

I didn’t have brown sugar last night at 10pm when I went to go put it in. I used “turbidano”, as my closest thing. It won’t be the same, but it’s something. I flavored it akin to the poultry recipe, crystalized ginger & peppercorns. Swapped out the allspice (because I thought I didn’t have it) for mustard seeds.

I have no idea if it’ll be good. But, then, I never thought I’d be cooking tongue, so it’s a whole adventure.

8

I like some lemon and/or orange in my poultry brines. Not too much to overpower, but enough to lend some citrus hints.

Brown sugar and molasses add smoky hints to the meat, but plain sugar also works.

9

Thanks, everyone!

It came out super tasty, I thought. My fiance didn’t like it so much, though he did really like the flavor. He found the texture kind of weird.

My friend who unexpectedly showed up, however, also enjoyed it.