During development of our Harvest Brine I ran it through its paces. This was a recent test I did to see how the dry brine did on the holy grail of competition chicken. Bite through skin.
During this test I cooked bone-in thighs and wings (a guy has to eat).
Total of 7.2 pounds of meat, which works out to ~2.5 tbs of
Harvest Brine.
I did not do any scraping of skin, cutting of knuckles, nothing but brine.
Before dry brine
After applying the dry brine I put the chicken in bags. Putting it in a bag helps to keep the moisture the brine pulls from the chicken in contact with the chicken, and is easier to flip.
Chicken sat in the fridge for 3.5 hours and I flipped the bag twice (massaging the outside of the bag to distribute brine while flipping).
This is what it looked like when it came out of the bag. (Note the moisture)
I patted down the exterior of the chicken to get rid of the excess moisture.
The chicken went on the grill with no further seasoning or rub. (Sauce will be applied later)
Progress shot
Sauced
Bite shot
With no special preparation and with a fairly short brine time I was able to get a clean bite.
This is due to the brine pulling moisture from the skin (part of that moisture goes into the meat due to diffusion and part of it ends up on the exterior of the skin, which is why it is important to dry the skin after the brine for bite-thru)
