Salt, acid and time: brining, dry brining and marinades
Three techniques people use interchangeably that do completely different things. What each one actually does, when to use it, and how to build one yourself.
First, the oxymoron
"Dry brining" is a contradiction. A brine is salt in water; a dry brine is salt on meat. The name stuck because what happens next is genuinely the same process, and nobody came up with a better one. It is just salting, done early enough to matter.
That is worth saying because the naming hides the real distinction, which is not wet versus dry. It is this: salt goes in, and almost nothing else does.
What actually penetrates, and what does not
Salt penetrates. It dissolves, moves into the meat, and seasons it all the way through given time. This is the entire mechanism behind every technique on this page.
Water penetrates, a little, and only in a wet brine, and only because the salt drags it along.
Sugar penetrates slowly and mostly stays near the surface.
Everything else stays on the outside. Garlic, herbs, spices, citrus, soy, wine: those molecules are far too large to move through muscle. They sit on the surface, which is not useless, but it is not seasoning the interior and no amount of extra time will change that.
That single fact explains most of what follows.
Dry brining: the default
Salt the meat, leave it uncovered in the fridge, cook it later.
What happens: salt draws moisture to the surface, dissolves into it, and that concentrated brine is reabsorbed carrying the salt inward. The surface dries out while the interior seasons. Nothing is diluted and nothing is lost.
Why it is the default: better seasoning, better browning, no bucket, no mess, no waterlogged texture. There is almost no cut this does not improve.
How much: about 1% of the weight of the meat in kosher salt. 1,000 g of tri-tip, 10 g of salt. You can eyeball it once you have weighed it a few times.
How long, roughly: - Steaks and chops, 1 to 2 inches: 45 minutes to 24 hours - Chicken pieces: 2 to 12 hours - Whole chicken: 12 to 24 hours - Tri-tip, pork loin, large roasts: 12 to 24 hours - Brisket, pork shoulder: 12 to 24 hours, and it barely notices more - Ribs: 2 to 12 hours. They are thin, and a long overnight starts pushing the edges toward ham - Fish: 15 to 45 minutes, and no longer
Uncovered is the point. A dry surface browns and takes smoke. Covered, you get the seasoning and lose half the benefit.
Sugar is the exception to all of this. A sweet rub left on overnight dissolves into a slurry and you end up cooking a wet surface, which steams rather than browning. Salt the night before; add anything sweet shortly before it cooks.
Wet brining: for lean things that dry out
Salt dissolved in water, meat submerged, refrigerated.
What happens: the same salt movement, plus some water carried in with it. The meat gains a few percent in weight, which is insurance against overcooking.
Where it earns its place: lean, dry-prone cuts where you have little margin. Turkey breast, pork chops, chicken breast. Almost nowhere else.
Where it does not: anything fatty, anything you want a crisp skin on, anything where texture matters more than moisture. It dilutes flavor and it can give poultry a faintly spongy quality.
The proportion: about 5% salt by weight of water, which is 50 g per litre. Hours rather than days: 1 hour per pound for poultry, and do not exceed it.
Equilibrium brining is the more elegant version: weigh the meat and the water together, add 1% of that total in salt, and leave it as long as you like. It cannot over-salt, because there is only ever 1% of salt in the system. Useful when timing is unpredictable.
Always pat dry and rest uncovered afterwards, or you will have undone the surface you need.
Marinades: surface treatment, and that is fine
A marinade seasons the outside and does almost nothing to the inside. It will not tenderize the interior, and it will not penetrate however long you leave it. Anyone telling you otherwise is repeating something they read.
What it is genuinely good for: flavor on the exterior, which is where most of the eating happens on anything thin; browning, because sugar and protein in the mix accelerate the crust; and a fat layer that carries aromatics and keeps things from sticking.
What it contains, and why: - Salt, or a salty thing. Soy, tamari, fish sauce, miso, Worcestershire. This is the only ingredient doing interior work. A marinade without salt is a glaze. - Fat. Neutral oil for most things. It carries the fat-soluble aromatics from garlic and spices and helps browning. Olive oil brings its own flavor and solidifies in the fridge. - Acid. Citrus, vinegar, wine, buttermilk, yogurt. It seasons the surface and adds brightness. It does not tenderize in any useful way; it denatures the outer few millimetres, which past a point reads as chalky and cured rather than tender. - Sugar. Honey, sugar, juice. For browning more than for sweetness. Too much and it burns before the meat is done. - Aromatics. Garlic, ginger, herbs, chiles, spices. Surface flavor. Use stems rather than leaves for anything long, since delicate leaves go slimy overnight.
How long: - Thin cuts, chicken thighs, skirt, flank: 4 to 24 hours - Whole chicken pieces: 8 to 24 hours - Fish: 15 to 30 minutes, and never in citrus unless you are making ceviche on purpose - Anything with pineapple, papaya, kiwi, ginger or figs: 2 hours maximum. Those carry enzymes that break protein down into mush, and that damage is not reversible
Pat it dry before it hits the heat. Wet meat steams. Every marinated thing you have eaten that was grey rather than charred went on wet.
Safety: marinate in the fridge, never on the counter. Used marinade has raw meat in it; boil it for a minute if you want it as a sauce, or throw it away.
The other things in this family
Injection. A syringe of seasoned liquid straight into the muscle. This is the only way to get anything other than salt into the interior, and it is why competition barbecue uses it. At home it is mostly unnecessary.
Curing. Salt plus nitrite, over days or weeks. This is preservation and a texture change, not seasoning, and it is what makes bacon bacon. Different subject, different rules, and the nitrite matters for safety rather than color.
Velveting. A little baking soda on sliced meat for 15 to 30 minutes before a stir fry. It raises the pH of the surface, which keeps it tender and helps it brown fast. Rinse it off. This is the closest thing to real tenderizing on this page.
Buttermilk and yogurt. Mild acid, a little enzyme activity, and dairy proteins that cling and brown. Gentler than citrus and much harder to overdo, which is why fried chicken lives in buttermilk rather than lemon juice.
Koji. Rice inoculated with a mold whose enzymes genuinely break down protein and create savory depth in a day or two. The one thing on this list that does what marinades are wrongly credited with.
The mistake that taught me most
Salting a burger before it went into the sous vide bath. Salt sealed against ground beef, held at temperature for an hour, does not season it, it cures it: the texture goes springy and the color goes faintly pink in a way that reads wrong immediately. Ground meat is the exception to the dry brine rule, and sous vide amplifies it because the salt has nowhere to go and an hour to get there.
Season ground meat after, or immediately before it cooks. Never in advance.
The short version
- Salting early is the technique. Everything else is a variation on it.
- Dry brine by default, 1% of the weight, uncovered, overnight.
- Wet brine only for lean, dry-prone cuts, and know you are trading flavor for insurance.
- Marinate for the surface, and do not expect anything else from it.
- Salt is the only ingredient going inside. Build around that and the rest becomes obvious.
- Dry the surface before it cooks, every time, whatever you did to it beforehand.