Brining Chickens

Photo: flickr user Trinity

Ingredients

cup Salt

cup Sugar

cup Molasses

1 teaspoon Garlic powder

1 teaspoon Onion powder

1 gal Water

Preparation

All you who don't brine yer chickens, listen up.

I know this whole thing went down a while ago, but....

I started brining the chicken I've been doing since the consensus on the porch was to do it. Now finally today I did six chickens at the same time and decided to try to see what difference it really makes. Well, it's a big deal!!

I did two with a salt, pepper and paprika rub and the other four were brined overnight with 3/4 cup salt, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/4 cup molasses and 1 tsp each of garlic and onion powder per gallon of water.

All six were smoked at about 250F for around 2 1/2 hours. I used almond wood and moped with 1/2 corn oil and 1/2 coke along with salt and pepper and rosemary.

The result: no comparison. While the non-brined was ok, the brined birds had a lot more smoke flavor and were also much more moist. The skin on the brined chickens did not crisp while the non-brined skins did. This is a minor price to pay.

Overall, DO IT. Any one who doesn't brine their birds is missing out big time. Not that I wasn't a believer before, now I will definitely not even consider doing it otherwise.