Brined Chicken Breast

(?servings, intermediate ingredient)
This is a time tested way of turning an otherwise hard and dry chicken breast into succulent tasty chicken. All you need is salt, sugar, water and time. While brining is normally used to prepare chicken or turkey for roasting, I will use dry poaching as the method of cooking in this recipe. I usually use this poached chicken in chicken potato salad, as a meat supplement to caesar’s salad, or as a sliced chicken appetizer with the appropriate sauce.

Ingredients

1. Large skinless chicken breast (1)
2. Salt
3. Brown sugar
4. Rosemary
5. Sesame oil
6. Quart sized ziploc bag (2)

Brining 

1. Fill a large glass (salad bowl) or ceramic container (soup tureen) with 4 cups of room temperature water. Add 4 heaped T of salt and 4t of soft brown sugar. Stir to ensure everything melts.
2. Your chicken breast should come skinless, normally in two halves. For the avoidance of doubt, the picture shows one chicken breast, with one half sliced. If you are using the smaller variety, you should use 3 halves.
3. Place the chicken in the brine, making sure the pieces are completely submerged. If you are using a container with a flat bottom, you will probably need additional brine, adjust accordingly. Cover with a plate or clear wrap. If it is a hot summer day you should consider keeping the chicken in the fridge during the brining, but I normally leave it out in the open overnight.
4. After 8 hours, rinse the chicken in water and discard the brine. If you are not cooking the chicken immediately, place it in the fridge.

Poaching (optional)

1. A few hours ahead of time, mix 1T of rosemarry, 1t of coriander seed powder with 5T of sesame oil. Leave this to sit.
2. Marinate the brined chicken breasts in the rosemary-sesame oil while you boil a Large pot of water. Rosmary is a woody herb and you may want to strain out the rosemary depending on how you plan to use the chicken later.
3. When the water is boiling, put each half breast of chicken into an individual quart sized zip loc bag. Spoon any left over oil into the bags as well. Squeeze out all the air and seal.
4. Put the bags in the boiling water. Cover and boil for 5 minutes. Leave in the pot, without opening the lid, for a further 20 minutes (less time if your chicken breasts are small, more time if your pot is not large enough).
5. When you finally remove the chicken from the bags, you should notice that the meat has a slight pinkish hue. This is normal, the chicken is not undercooked.
6. There will be a small quantity of concentrated chicken stock left in each bag from the brine that was in the chicken. Reserve this and drench the chicken in it after you have sliced/diced it. You can also use this stock for making a sauce.

Notes

• You can of course choose to roast your chicken breast instead of poaching it, the brining procedure is the same.
• I also have a chicken avocado salad recipe that goes perfectly with this brining cum poaching recipe.
• Some people prefer more salt and less soaking time. This 8-hour method leaves the chicken less salty and more natural tasting but if you’d like to give your chicken a ‘smoked’ flavour, by all means go with more salt.
• Brining depends on the scientific phenomenon known as osmosis where dissolved substances in two liquids seperated by a membrane will want to equalize concentrations. Salt ions are very small and they will travel into the chicken through the cell membranes. However, the molecules of other substances dissolved in the chicken are too big to escape into the brine and water is drawn into the chicken to equalize concentrations instead. The result is that both salt and water are drawn into the chicken.