HermTheWorm’s B.L.O.G.

(This blog entry is under construction, come back later! When you see that this is not here anymore, you may precede, until then, go work out or something. Seriously. Don’t read this yet. Shoo!)

A lot of guys on this site, and I am definitely not one of them, think that they are God’s gift to women.

Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but brining is God’s gift to chicken.

I’ll take you through what it is, and why it’s awesome, and how to do it.

Mucho information.  Stick with me HERE, though, kiddies, this is the Cliff notes version. You can go to that link when you have a lot of time to kill.

Chicken is “brined” in a highly concentrated salt solution, a lot of people including yours truly, like to add other flavors to the brine to get even more flavor into the chicken, all natural liquid smoke is great.

The high salt content permeates meat cells, via osmosis, and causes protein strands to denature (get more tender). The tightly wound proteins unwind and get tangled together, and when heated, the proteins form a matrix that traps water molecules (jucier) and holds onto them tightly during cooking. Blah, blah f–king blah.

All you need to know is that brining results in meat that is more moist and flavorful than unbrined meat. That’s all

You can make your own brining solution at home, Google it, there are a gazillion. Most brining solutions include sugar. NO sugar in any HermTheWorm  food. Ever. If you absolutely have to use sugar. Ever. Use Muscovado sugar

Buy it here.

Here’s the brining soulution that I use. I have cases and cases of this in my storage area that I pay off the super not to report as a fire hazard (As if cases of foodstuff will spontaneously combust, but whatever).

This stuff has no sugar! Yes! Score!

…And a great blend of herbs that infuses any chicken with Hermaliscious flavor (patent pending.)

It used to be prohibitively expensive, but for some reason it’s been on sale at Amzon.com at 60% off for the last year.

60% off? At 60% off my cynical New York mind says, “Okay, there must be something fishy here”. No little fishies–I love little fishies, especially guppies, I feed them to my piranhas–but I digress. I’ve been ordering this up the wazoo for the last year, it must be some sort of typo or mistake,  Chefs Brining Blend 

Definitely take advantage of this!

You can get brining bags for a 3-4 pound chicken (or smaller) at Williams-Sonoma.

At 4 bags for 16 dollars, they are prohibitively overpriced.

Go to your grocery store and get a box of 2 gallon zip lock bags for like 1/10th the price and you’re good to go. A one gallon bag is fine for a few peices. Just to be on the safe side, when you have the brining bag in the fridge, always make sure that the zipper side is up, just in case it leaks, it won’t with the zipper side up.

If you have a big family to feed and need to do an oven stuffer or need to do a turkey you can order large size bags at Sur La table , they will accommodate a big or even huge bird.

WHEN YOU PREPARE THE BRINING SOLUTION.

Boil a pot of water and drop the brining blend into the pot. The salt and everything else won’t dissolve preperly if you don’t. Let the solution cool off and give it another stir and it’s done. I like to add some liquid smoke at this point, it won’t make the chicken taste like "smoked chicken" but will impart nice additional flavor. You can also add lemon extract to the mix.

This is important.

Before you put your brining solution into the bag, dump enough ice into it to make it VERY COLD. You don’t want to put your chicken in lukewarm water and wait for it to get cold in the fridge, you could get food poisoning that way, make sure the brining solution is VERY COLD (With ice cubes floating around it.)

Brine for as little as three hours, overnight is better, especially if you’re brining a whole bird.

I’m not just saying this because I’m Jewish.

If you don’t want to go through the trouble of brining, get Empire Kosher chickens (Any kosher chicken will do). They consistently win taste tests done by all who do them because the process of making them kosher is similar to brining. Consequently, DON’T use Empire if you are brining because it will be like brining it twice and you won’t get good results.

The staple of my protein intake are chicken breasts.

Lean and versatile. There’s 8 billion things you can do with them to make them less boring.

The only drawback to skinless chicken breasts is that if you cook them 5 seconds longer than the "just right" window they are too dry and have the taste and texture of sawdust; and unlike red meat, you can’t undercook chicken, or it will really be great diet food as you will get violently ill.

What to do?

Whether you’re pan searing a skinless chicken breast or baking a chicken breast on the bone (yummers), whatever the recipe, you need this handy, dandy gadget and your problems will be solved.

I have 3 of these in the event that if I lose one and can’t find the other, I still have a third one floating around.

That’s how indispensable I find this.

This.

It’s called the Cajun Injector, it is literally a big hypodermic needle, and this is the best version. It is built like a tank and dishwasher safe.

Olive oil is a good fat. What I do is inject an infused olive oil (pepper, lemon, garlic, etc.)–now here’s what I was afraid would happen, I’d get all sidetracked by how many different things you can inject into your chicken, so let’s just stick with infused olive oils for now because it adds flavor, texture and ups the health factor.

Here’s how you use it

Techniques

I have a million techniques better than these I gleaned form my 9 zillion DVD’s on BBQing (another one of my obsessions). Just ask me if you have any questions and I’ll tell you what you need to know.

After you’ve used it once or twice you’ll get the hang of it and never go back to chicken that hasn’t been injected ever again. This is also great for whole roast chicken and roast turkeys and…Well, everything except fish and seafood.

I’ll give you some simple, quick (Everything I give you will be simple and quick) recipes next time I sit my big, black, Jewish ass in front of the computer.

If you’re really a sick  bastard, as I am (You shouldn’t be on this site if you’re not a sick bastard when it comes to health and fitness, incidentally), you can inject Udo’s oil into your chicken–Udo’s oil is the best thing on the planet. It won’t add much taste, but the oil will make your chicken less dry and add a lot of healthy goodies inside. You can jack up the flavor of Udo’s if you’re going for an Asian flavored chicken, just add a few drops of sesame oil to the Udo’s (a little goes a long way with that and you can pick it up in any supermarket).

Next up: Brining chicken, what it is and how to do it and a few recipes.