I Warm Brine Chicken... Call the Authorities
 

I warm my 1/2 gallon of salt / sugar / spice brine to a boil. Then let cool for a couple hours. Then I add the other 1/2 gallon of cool water, and throw the cold Chix in. warm room temp brine after the chicken cools it. The Chix is left on the counter for 3-5 hours.

Then either cooked or in the fridge for a skin dry, and cooked the next day.

Call me reckless, but that brine is less hospitable to life than Mars. No microbial growth. The warm brine penetrates faster and deeper, too.

Been doing this for a long time. 2 birds per week average.

:shock: Definitely NOT a safe practice with poultry.... No way no how. Most of the birds I get anyway are already "enhanced" brined but dry brining is something different entirely.

Chicken roulette right there. :twitch:


You should try dry brining if you haven't already.

Nothing can grow in 1 gallon of water and 1 cup of pickling salt.

So aside from a pre-programmed "ick" factor, scientifically the chicken is sterile.

I use farm-fresh, never frozen local chickens. No injected brines when I get them.

I dry-brine beef, some pork cuts. Chicken is more porous, and the brine spices mildly flavor the meat pretty deep.

Inject. The end.

I've done this plenty of times. I agree with TedW. Nothing can live in a brine. Brines were around long before refrigeration and were used for preservation on foods.

Injecting is groovy but not the same. The chicken flesh is more porous and takes the brine flavorings really well.

If I'm grilling with a rub, after the brine, I'll separate the skin from meat, get some rub under there, then on top and in the fridge it goes for a day to dry.

The meat is crazy sweet smelling the entire time.

EDIT- Just a bit of calculation here. The brine at that concentration (10% solution) is killing most everything after 30 minutes. Keeping a chic in the fridge isn't killing anything. Just slowing it.

I'm not aware of any toxic halophile bacteria (salt tolerant bugs) and certainly the bacterial pathogens which commonly cause chicken food poisoning are not viable in concentrated brine. But the salt water might not have access to all the nooks and crannies of the bird so there is still some (how much?) risk of leaving the bird at room temp for long periods. Even so, your experience of winning at Russian roulette has to count for something.

And what of the fridge with respect to the nooks and crannies? Zero effect. Growth is only slowed.

4 hours in a brine. Nooks and crannies are the least of my worries. Again, scientifically this is all a non-issue, despite the use of the word "roulette"

The brine is not the issue. Brine doesn't penetrate that far into the meat. It's the bacteria inside the chicken that is the problem. There, it can grow quite well at room temperature.

Bacterial contamination is a surface activity. Bacteria doesn't live within tissue, unless you see some gigantic puss cavity.

TedW...all of what you say can be or is true but it is like peeing into the wind. It might not have come back on you but I do not want to risk it.

I called. They're on their way.

And there's the rub... get it... rub??? sorry

Anyway, this is much like the days when we finally learned that no one was getting sick from eating pink pork anymore. Most people still think pink pork = infectious.

Most people are still microbe-phobic

I'm with you TedW.Its good to be safe but its over kill today. Watchin a cooking show with the french chef that used to cook with Julia Child, Total old school with handling the chicken to the veggies and everything else. Gotta love it

I see your point and personally would not be concerned, if I try this will probably follow your example, however will put bird and brine in fridge then as time passed the warm brine penetrates, brine and bird cool down, after 3 to 5 hours will be at safe temp then remove for cook or cool storage to dry skin. I see it as a hybrid of your method. The only birds I brine are oven or direct heat cooked have not felt the need to brine indirect cooked birds. Thanks for sharing.