Brine for wings

[Gerry D.]

I was looking for a brine for some chicken wings for a superbowl party. I found a brine where I like the ingredients so I tried in with a 5 pound bone in turkey breast. I brined it for about 12 hours and while the meat stayed moist, it didn't impart any flavor. I was thinking because it was a much bigger piece of meat that it needed to brine longer. Just looking for ideas to tweak the recipe. To tell you the truth, they had me at beer. It's Emeril's recipe by the way.

4 cups water
2/3 cup fresh orange juice
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1/2 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
2 tablespoons Emeril's Southwest Essence or other Southwest seasoning
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 cup chopped yellow onions
1 lime, sliced thinly
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
2 teaspoons minced garlic
2 (12-ounce) beers

Thanks for all of the help.

 

[Shawn W]

I did this brine for an xmas bird and flavor came through well, right down to the thickest part of the meat:

4qts water
2C Diamond Kosher (I used pickling salt equiv by weight)
2C sugar
2 red bell peppersm roasted black, peeled & diced
1 medium onion sliced
10 cloves garlic
5 stalks of celery
handful of celery leaves
1/4C Whole peppercorns, lightly toasted
3T Dry Basil leaves
3T Dry Oregano Leaves
2T Dry Thyme
8 Bay Leaves
1T gr white pepper
4T Zatarain's Crab Boil
1 bottle Franks Xtra Hot Red Hot Sauce, 148ml

Bring everything together in 2 qts of water, simmer 1 hour covered, mash veggies some with a potato masher, simmer another hour or so until the veggies look fairly spent.
Cool, add 2 qts cold water, once below 40ºF add skinned turkey and brine for 36 hours. Air dry an hour or so, lightly coat with oil. Apply light sprinkle of rub.

Smoke at 250ºF until done.

By comparison to your brine, my brine looks a lot stronger in flavor. I went 36 hours as well. Did you simmer yours?

Things I might try with your brine (no particular order, not necessarily all suggestions at once):

-double or triple the brine time

-skip the oj, use more fresh lime/lemon juice and zest

-double or triple the southwest seasoning, crushed red pepper, onions, cilantro and garlic

-simmer and mash, then cool

If using that recipe for wings instead of whole turkey breast, mild brine flavor possibly won't stand up enough if you are also saucing the wings ... if you can't make it more intense might as well do a flavorless brine.

 

[Gerry D.]

To tell you the truth I didn't follow the recipe exactly, I have a problem with that.

I didn't use the Creole Seasoning. I just used whatever rub I had mixed up. No I didn't simmer it, I just stirred until the sugar and salt were dissolved. I don't think there was enough salt in this recipe, but that could have been due to my rub, which had no salt in it. It smelled great I was just dissapointed with the flavor, meaning there wasn't any. I think that I'll try it again with actual wings and try to stick to the recipe.

 

[Shawn W]

oh yeah I think you're right, standard brine salt is 0.5C Diamond /qt water & 0.5C sugar ... I think I would almost double the salt and sugar as written ... if the brine salt was strong enough it might also carry the flavor through better

 

[Robert T.]

I have had really good results on wings without brining. Does anyone else brine their wings before smoking?

Bob

 

[Shawn W]

Low-Salt Brining Doesn't Work

Some people find that flavor brined meat is just too salty for their tastes. Will a flavor brine still work if you cut the amount of salt in half? Not according to the November/December 2002 issue of Cook's Illustrated magazine.

Cook's brined shrimp, pork chops, and whole chicken in a full-strength solution and a half-strength solution for 1 hour per pound. After cooking and tasting, they found that the meats brined at half-strength were a lot less salty than those brined at full-strength, but the improvement in moisture content was marginal, at best. In fact, for shrimp and chicken, Cook's felt that there was no point in flavor brining at half-strength at all.

"If you are very sensitive to salt, we recommend that you skip brining," says Cook's.

From All About Brining

 

[Davo]

g'day folks,
I experimented with brining for the first time last weekend using 4 chicken drumsticks (part of the chicken leg that's shaped like a drumstick) I think you guys refer to them as thighs, anyway, my wife is very salt sensitive so I allowed her to marinate her 4 drumsticks the way she wanted to and I had 6 in total for myself so I brined 4 and used a dry marinate rub only on the remaining 2 so I can compare after grilling.
My wife made a Japanese style teriyaki style marinate using natural ingrediants as she would back in japan.

Results were in, 3 styles of chicken cooked on the same grill, although wife's chicken went on last. Wife's chicken was nice, can taste the ginger and the marinate but maybe needed more time in the marinate as they were a bit dry.
My 2 dry rub drumsticks were nice too and could really taste the chicken seasoning and the oregano I rubbed in but also were a bit dry.
My 4 brined (4 Hours) peices had only a very light seasoning on the skin but they were so moist and tender compared to my other 2 and my wife's.
I use metric measures for the amounts of seasonings such as salt etc so I used 1 1/2 tablespoons of salt to 1.5 litre (approx a third US Gal) water for the brine.
After 4 hours, I took out the chicken and rinsed them under the tap and patted them dry with paper towels.
My wife tasted my brined chicken and she said while it was too salty for her, it wasn't as bad as she expected.Japanese women are too taste sensitve for my liking hehehehe.
It's hard to get any recipes from her because she she is very Old school when it comes to cooking and seems to know how much stuff to put in and what.She just keeps on slurping till it tastes right LOL.
I think I could really get into this brining game but you need salt and a fair bit of it to make it work otherwise it won't allow any moisture to penetrate into the meat and surround the cells within the meat.Just don't forget to rinse it in clear unsalted water after you take out then pat dry with paper towels.
Some say to put the chicken in the fridge uncovered to dry out the skin, I don't reckon there is any need for that because the heat of the fire will dry it out enough to get some really nice char on the skin, especially if you sprayed some oil and maybe basted it with some sauce just before the taking off.
The same should apply to chicken wings or any other part of the chicken (we call them chooks in Australia eg,....to cook a chook).

Cheers & beers

Davo

 

[Paul K]

Gerry,

You need to brine the meat longer for a flavor brine as opposed to a straight brine where you're going after increased moisture. I'd go with Shawn's recommendations.

Paul

 

[KevinJ]

I have come back to this post a few times because I am a big fan of grillin my wings and then tossing in my modified garlic hot sauce but i have never brined a bird before and felt unable to constructivly add to the topic. However, back to the post and some thoughts. I think that you are attempting to add flavor to the wing through the brining process. My only reservation about this is the fact that being a typical wing the sauce typically dominates the flavor while a flavored brine would be lost behind a sauce. A second note would be that wings are already nice and moist if properly cooked so the brine will not bring that much to the table in that area.
Then what got me to post on this is an idea I thought of but dont have the knowledge to know if its able to be done. So I propose this idea. Is it possible to bring the typical "wing" heat and some flavor in brining while not using any sauce. From what i read is that the brine will flavor the meat, but can we add heat to the skin that will stick through the cooking process and produce a quality finished produce. Is this possible?

 

[Gerry D.]

The only reason that I wanted to brine the wings is that I am smoking a turducken overnight and I don't know what state (of inebriation) that I will be in when it comes time to cook the wings. I might be asleep on the couch. So I wanted some insurance in case I'm not the one who is cooking them. I guess I could just do a standard brine. I just really liked this brine recipe and hoped that it would work. I'll just stick to the recipe, lengthen the brine time an try again this weekend. Thats what a get for messing with a recipe before I tried it once. I guess I was getting a little cocky.

 

[j biesinger]

I find skin to be a general barrier to brines plus brines dont enhance skin, just meat. Since wings are mostly skin (not to mention the best part), I don't bother brining wings. I find that with smoking wings, the biggest problem is rubbery skin, so once again, no need to brine.

rub 'em, smoke 'en, and grill the heck out of 'em until you get crispy skin.