Brining is a popular technique used to help ensure moist, flavorful turkey. But is it necessary to brine a turkey breast, or does this lean cut not benefit as much? Let’s dive into the pros and cons of brining turkey breasts to help you decide if it’s worth the extra time and effort.
What is Brining and Why Do it?
Brining involves soaking meat in a saltwater solution before cooking. The salt allows the meat to retain more moisture instead of drying out. Aromatics like herbs, spices, and citrus can also be added to the brine to impart flavor.
This technique is especially helpful for traditionally drier cuts like turkey breast The lean white meat is prone to ending up stringy and bland Brining provides big improvements in both texture and taste,
Should You Brine a Whole Turkey?
Brining a whole turkey is highly recommended. The saltwater has time to fully penetrate and season the large bird overnight This helps prevent the breast meat from drying out and also amps up the flavor throughout.
If you only have room for a turkey breast, brining is still worthwhile but requires less time. Let’s look at why brining makes such a difference specifically for boneless or bone-in turkey breasts.
Benefits of Brining Turkey Breasts
Here are the main benefits you’ll enjoy by brining turkey breasts
- More moist, juicy meat. The salt allows the breast to retain moisture instead of drying out.
- Improved texture. Brining makes the meat tender and gives it a smooth, succulent quality.
- Enhanced flavor. The salty brine provides a savory essence while aromatics like citrus and herbs impart extra complexity.
- Faster cooking time. Brined turkey cooks slightly more quickly, so watch diligently for doneness.
- Insurance against overcooking. Even if you accidentally cook it too long, a brined breast stays moister.
Tips for Brining Turkey Breasts
To maximize the benefits, here are some tips for brining turkey breasts:
- Use a ratio of 1 cup kosher salt to 1 gallon of water. This creates the ideal brine strength.
- Submerge the breast completely in the brine. Weigh it down if needed.
- Brine in the refrigerator at 40°F or below.
- Brine bone-in breasts for 12-24 hours, boneless for 8-12 hours.
- Rinse off the breast after brining and pat very dry.
- Let it air dry in the fridge for 8-12 hours after rinsing for extra crispy skin.
FAQs About Brining Turkey Breasts
Should you rinse off the brine before cooking?
Yes, it’s important to rinse off the turkey breast once brining is complete. This removes excess salt from the surface before cooking. Make sure to pat it very dry afterwards.
Does brining work for frozen turkey breasts?
Brining frozen turkey breast is effective, but thawing first allows the brine to penetrate more evenly for best results.
What if I don’t have room in my fridge for brining?
You can use a cooler filled with ice packs to keep turkey breasts cold while brining if your fridge space is limited.
Can I cook the turkey right after brining?
It’s best to let it air dry in the fridge for 8-12 hours after rinsing off the brine. This helps the skin get crispy when roasted.
What flavorings work well in a brine?
Classic brine flavorings include orange, lemon, herbs like thyme and sage, garlic, peppercorns, onion and bay leaves. Avoid over-sweetening with sugars.
Should You Bother Brining Turkey Breasts?
While an optional step, brining turkey breasts makes a big difference in moisture, texture and flavor. The relatively quick brining time of 12-24 hours is worthwhile insurance against dried out turkey. For the juiciest, most flavorful homemade turkey breast, take the time to brine.
The Takeaway
Brining is highly effective for maximizing the quality of lean turkey breasts prone to drying out. Allowing them to soak overnight in a saltwater brine infuses moisture, seasons the meat, and provides noticeably juicier texture and flavor. With minimal hands-on time required, it’s a simple way to help ensure tender, succulent turkey breast every time.
How Brining Works
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, lets do a quick recap on brining basics. The basic process involves soaking meat (usually lean meats, like turkey, chicken, or pork chops) in a tub full of heavily salted water overnight. Most brines are in the range of 5 to 8% salt to water by weight. Over the course of the night, the meat absorbs some of that water. More importantly, that water stays put even after the meat is cooked. By brining meat, you can decrease the amount of total moisture loss by 30 to 40%.
To demonstrate, I cooked three identical turkey breasts in a 300°F (150°C) oven to an internal temperature of 145°F (63°C). One was brined, the other was soaked overnight in plain water, and the last was left alone. All three breasts came from non-kosher, non-enhanced birds (i.e., the birds were natural, having received no treatment after slaughter). I charted their weight straight from the package, after brining, and after cooking.
Both the bird soaked in brine and the bird soaked in water gained a significant amount of weight prior to roasting, but while the watered bird lost nearly all of that weight as it cooked, the brined bird retained a good deal more. This corresponded to a juicier texture on eating. So whats going on here?
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Some publications attribute it all to osmosis—the tendency for water to move across a membrane from an area of low solute concentration to an area of high solute concentration. In this case, water moves from the brining vessel (low solute concentration) to the inside of the turkeys cells (where there are lots of proteins, minerals, and other fun biological goodies dissolved in the water).
This theory is, in fact, inaccurate. If it were true, then soaking a turkey in pure, unsalted water should be more effective than soaking it in a brine, and weve already seen that that is not the case. Moreover, if you soak a turkey in a ridiculously concentrated brine (I tested turkey in a 35% salt solution), according to the osmosis theory, it should dry out even more.
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However, I found that despite turning the turkey inedibly salty, a highly concentrated 35% salt solution was just as effective at helping a turkey retain moisture as a more moderate 6% salt solution, indicating that the osmosis theory is entirely bunk.
To understand whats really happening, you have to look at the structure of turkey muscles. Muscles are made up of long, bundled fibers, each one housed in a tough protein sheath. As the turkey heats, the proteins that make up this sheath will contract. Just like when you squeeze a tube of toothpaste, this causes juices to be forced out of the bird. Heat them to much above 150°F (66°C) or so, and you end up with dry, stringy meat.
Salt helps mitigate this shrinkage by dissolving some of the muscle proteins (mainly myosin). The muscle fibers loosen up, allowing them to absorb more moisture, and, more importantly, they dont contract as much when they cook, ensuring that more of that moisture stays in place as the turkey cooks.
Sounds great, right? But theres a catch.
Brining Alternatives
By far the most common alternative is plain old salting. When you salt a turkey (or chicken) breast, meat juices are initially drawn out through the process of osmosis (yes, this time it really is osmosis at work). As the salt dissolves in these juices, it forms what amounts to a very concentrated brine, which then allows it to break down muscle proteins. The loosened muscle fibers allow the juices to get reabsorbed, this time taking the salt along for the ride.
Through this process—osmosis, dissolving, reabsorbing—the salt will slowly work its way into the meat.
Ive also heard people ask the very obvious question: If brining introduces bland, boring tap water into the bird, why not brine in a more flavorful solution?
Why not, indeed? I decided to find out.
With so many methods to test side by side, it became impractical to try to roast turkey breasts simultaneously. Instead, I roasted 24 chicken breasts in four different batches of six, averaging out the data across the batches. While chicken is not exactly turkey, the two are similar enough that results for one should correlate to results for the other.
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Heres what I tried:
- Breast #1: plain (untreated)
- Breast #2: brined overnight in a 6% salt solution
- Breast #3: heavily salted overnight
- Breast #4: brined overnight in chicken broth with a 6% salt content
- Breast #5: brined overnight in cider with a 6% salt content
- Breast #6: soaked overnight in plain water
Breasts #1 and #6 were included as a control to ensure that the brine and salt solutions were behaving as expected, as well as a means of evaluating how closely the data would mirror that of the turkey breasts.
Heres what happened with breasts #1, #2, #3, and #6 (plain, brined, salted, and water-soaked).
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As expected, the brined chicken breasts held on to significantly more moisture than either the plain chicken breasts or the water-soaked chicken breasts. Indeed, in this test, the water-soaked breasts actually ended up drier on average than the plain breasts. Take a look at the carnage:
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Dry as the Gobi Desert (on an admittedly very-moist-for-a-desert day).
On the other hand, take a look at the brined breast:
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As plump and juicy as a benevolent aunt in a Disney film. Tasting it, you definitely feel a case of wet-sponge syndrome. Water comes out of it as you chew, giving you the illusion of juiciness, but the texture is a little too loose, and the flavor a little bland.
Moving on to the salted breast, we find that its still significantly moister than the unsalted breast (though it was a couple of percentage points drier than the brined breast). Tasting it, youll find its undoubtedly juicier and better-seasoned, with a stronger chicken flavor. Texture-wise, its significantly different from both plain and brined turkey, with the smooth, dense-but-tender texture of lightly cured meat.
Visually, you can see clear signs of this curing with its decidedly pink hue:
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With a small chicken breast, this pink, moist, cured section extends nearly to the center of the breast. On a turkey, youd see it only around the outer edges (which, serendipitously, happen to be the parts most prone to overcooking and drying out anyway).
While the brined breast was slightly juicier, flavor-wise and texture-wise, Id take the salted chicken over the brined any day.