Would you recommend and injection for a whole breast or just a brine? What are your thoughts on seasoning?
First time on a whole turkey breast. Does have the 'insurance' of fat content like a pork shoulder or brisket. Thanks all!
I brine and inject all my Turkey breast, Turkeys, Chicken Breast, and Whole Chickens enhanced or not. I've never had an issue doing enhanced birds or fresh birds this way.
See I make up the brine and then I inject the meat with that brine and then brine it haha .
What does this do? It just gets everything done faster, brine all the way in the meat, and makes it all fool proof.
I do what is called an Equilibrium Brine.
The concept is that you weigh the water and the bird and then add a percentage (%) of salt, sugar, (and cure #1 if using it) that works with the total weight.
The stuff you add distributes equally between the water and the bird/meat over a period of time and u are then guaranteed to never bee too salty no matter how long you leave it because you measured the % of salt/sugar/cure you add against the whole weight, so when distributed equally thats what all the stuff contains.
Example. If you have 10 pounds/160 ounces of water + meat and you add 2% salt = 3.2oz salt, you will never end up with more than 2% salt in the water and/or the meat. Fool proof, u just gotta give i the amount of time it needs.
Salt and cure #1, etc. penetrates meat at about 1/4 inch every 24hrs.
So a 3 inch thick piece of meat submerged in the brine needs 6 days for the salt to soak all the way through (1/4 inch from all sides = 1/2inch a day total, so 6 days = 3 inches).
There is a trick to speed this up that makes good sense.
You make up the Equilibrium Brine AND you also inject the meat with that brine and add the meat to the brine. This gives you brine penetration from both outside and inside to speed things up :)
So it's fool proof if you follow these steps:
- Get Total Weight of water + meat and convert to ounces or grams (grams is simpler)
- Measure Salt at 2% of Total Weight
- Measure Sugar at 1% of Total Weight
- If using cure#1 (at 6.25% nitrite) measure at 1.12gm per pound of Total Weight
- Dissolve it all in cool water to make the brine (add any other seasoning u may like to brine)
- Submerge meat and set in fridge. Wait 1 day per 1/2 inch thickness of meat or 2 days per inch of thickness of meat. Add 1 day at the end to be extra sure.
- Done!!!
- if you want it to brine/cure faster then inject meat with some of the brine after it is mixed up, figure out how long it will take knowing 1/4 inch penetration per day from both inside and outside of meat depending on how well you injected
You can leave it any number of days over the minimum number of days and it will not over salt. Simply full proof!
I hope this info helps :)