brine max duration?

[Jason H.]

All,

Is 24 hours too long to brine boston butt? I typically do 12 hours but with work and other commitments I need to do it tonight say around 9pm and then start the cook the next day around 11:30pm. Is this too long to be in the brine? Possibility of being too salty?

 

[R Cain]

Depends on the brine. If you use less salt you can brine it longer.

-rog

 

[Tony R]

Just apply your rub.
A brine may give you a hammy taste or be too salty.
Let us know what you decide and how it went.

 

[Rob O]

It may be. Depends on what you're going for with the butt.

To give you some idea, if you're making corned beef you can leave it in the pickling brine for ... I've gone as long as 2 weeks. But then you get corned beef textured meat.

[On edit: Just remembered. Corned beef uses a much higher salt concentration than pork or chicken for brining so .... ignore everything I wrote above. Probably not a safe food handling technique.]

For what it's worth if you soak the meat for a couple of hours you can leach out the salt taste (again what I do when making corned beef) but it will also leach out some of whatever other flavors are in your brine. May also cause the meat to stall longer when you go to smoke it due to the increased moisture content.

Probably more than you wanted to know but ... thought I'd try to help......