Chicken brine will bring out flavors and juiciness to the meat. Summer is approaching and grilling season is starting. Time to fire up the charcoal and soak some chicken in this simple chicken brine. You’ll be amazed at how flavorful, tender and juicy your chicken becomes.
Brining chicken serves a few purposes. Firstly, it enhances flavor by allowing the meat to absorb the salt and any other flavorings in the brine. Secondly, it helps retain moisture during cooking, resulting in juicier meat. Lastly, brining can also tenderize the breast of chicken, making it more palatable. Overall, brining is a simple yet effective way to improve the taste and texture of chicken.
Chicken Brine
You have probably read or heard that brining is good for chicken.
What brining does, is add moisture to the meat and, along with the salt, the water is absorbed into the flesh.
Well, what you can do is take this principle and add to it some additional seasonings that take the brine to a whole new level. And, as Guy Fieri would say, “straight to Flavortown.”
Ingredients For The Brine
For this flavoring, we used my traditional Italian-style seasonings: garlic, basil, thyme, oregano, fennel, along with Kosher salt, and sugar.
These ingredients get put into a small saucepan along with water, and get boiled and made into an herbal tea of sorts.
(I recently saw a recipe from a blog that I follow for “Poultry Seasoning.” It is a more traditional blend of Thanksgiving-flavored spices and thought that it would be something to try rather than the Italian blend that I use).
Preparing The Brine
Place all the ingredients into a saucepan and bring to a slow boil. Stir to dissolve the salt and let the pot boil for 5 minutes. Then, you will need to cool the brine to room temperature.
Prepare an ice bath in a large bowl and soak the pot in the cold water until it has cooled. This should take 15 minutes.
Then, place the chicken into a suitable sized bowl or a good zip-lock bag and cover the chicken with the brine. Refrigerate the chicken covered or zipped in the bag for the time indicated below.
All the great flavors in the seasonings are infused into the water and as the chicken soaks, all this goodness gets absorbed. It becomes a pot of flavor goodness.
Use Unprocessed Chicken
First off though, make sure that the chicken you are using has not already been injected with saline.
If it has been, there will be a statement on the label that indicates this.
You want to start out with unprocessed or organic chicken. Brining a saline-injected chicken will result in too salty chicken.
How Long Do You Brine Chicken?
These tasty chicken thighs were brined for 3 hours. If you’re brining skinless, boneless breasts, 1 to 2 hours is adequate.
Skin on, bone-in chicken, 2 to 3 hours. A whole chicken should be brined for 3 to 4 hours. Any longer than this, the chicken will get too salty.
Use the time you have…it all adds up to added flavor!
Brine Is Not A Marinade
A brine is unlike a marinade. Some meats are left in the refrigerator to marinate overnight, using an acid-based or oil-based marinade. This gives the meat lots of flavor.
If you leave the meat in a brine overnight it will…#1. get too salty and, #2. the watery brine will actually start to pull out some of the natural flavorings of the meat. You don’t want that.
Brining chicken adds moisture and flavor to ensure a tender and tasty piece of chicken.
Getting The Chicken Ready To Grill
To prep the chicken for the grill, remove them from the brine and pat dry. You can leave on any bits of herbs that stick to the chicken when you take it out of the brine.
Very lightly oil the skin with olive oil, then grill, skin side down 7 or 8 minutes to get a nice char.
Turn and let cook 10 or 12 more minutes until the internal temperature is around 160°F. Let the chicken rest for 5 or 10 minutes, then serve it. The chicken brine will have done its work!
Side Dish Ideas For Grilled Chicken
First of all would be a nice green salad.
Next would be a starch of some kind.
- Pan-fried potatoes and onions
- Sauteed shredded sweet potatoes
- Au gratin potatoes
- Roasted red potatoes with onions
- Picnic Potato Salad
Then a vegetable side dish.
- Green beans with bacon and onions
- Roasted cruciferous vegetables
- Parmesan roasted Brussels sprouts
- Insanely good vegetable side dishes
The flavor of the herbs in the meat is amazing. MaryJo even mentioned that this was the tastiest chicken I had ever made.
Simple chicken brine…that’s good enough for me.
Simple Chicken Brine For Grilling
Ingredients
- 3 cups water
- 3 tbsp. Coarse Kosher salt, (approx. 50 grams)
- 2 cloves garlic, coarse chopped
- 1 tbsp. dried thyme
- 1 tbsp. dried basil
- 1 tbsp. dried oregano
- 1 tbsp. fennel seeds
Instructions
- Place all ingredients into a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir to dissolve the salt. Reduce the heat to a low boil for 5 minutes.
- Remove from the heat and let cool. Placed the saucepan into an ice bath prepared in a skillet. In 15 minutes the temperature of the brine was less than 80°.
- Place the chicken pieces into a covered bowl or ziplock type bag and cover with the brine.
- Refrigerate 1 to 4 hours depending on your chicken. 1 to 2 hours for boneless, skinless cuts. 2 to 3 hours for skin on, bone in cuts. 3 to 4 hours for a whole chicken.
- Remove the chicken from the brine, pat dry and lightly oil. A bit of pepper may be added at this time if desired.
- Grill the chicken until the internal temperature is at least 160°F.
Notes
- To brine a whole chicken, you may need to double the recipe to fully immerse the chicken.
- Make sure that the chicken you are using has not been injected with saline already.
- Try different spices to change up the flavor, especially the Poultry Seasoning as mentioned in the blog narrative.
- The ingredient photo shows a bit of sugar in the brine. After further testing, I found that the sugar is not beneficial.
Nancy Pitt
This is a wonderful brine. Love the fact that you said the sugar is unnecessary. I totally agree.
I had to let my chicken rest overnight after brining, because it was too windy out to que.
It was stunningly delicious and oh so juicy!
Joe Boyle
Hi Nancy,
Thanks for the nice comment. Glad you liked it.
Joe
Ray Williamson
How much water & how much of each spice
Joe Boyle
The recipe card has all the quantities needed. Scroll to the bottom of the article. Joe
Connie Mellott
I tried this recipe and was pleasantly surprised! Was used to boiling chicken off before grilling to be sure it was cooked thru but with this brine it is perfection without pre-cooking. A family favorite now in the grilling rotation. Thank you for the recipe and I trust you for more good recipes–tried and made the warm potato salad w/sun dried tomatoes multiple times and it, too, was well-received. Just one question: i printed the brine recipe a year ago or so and went today to it in my pins and they are different- only one has sugar. ?? I am curious as to which you use. Thanks & happy summer!
Joe Boyle
Hi Connie, thanks for the comment. I decided to take the sugar out of the recipe because I thought that it didn’t add that much to the final results. Add sugar if you would like. It may help slightly to crisp the chicken skin.
Sandy Axelrod
Your chicken looks amazing and very juicy! Looking forward to trying this brine!!! Hope you and MJ are doing well and get to enjoy your boat all summer long.
John G
Thank you for the recipe, I want to try it soon! I’m curious as to the amount of sodium in the chicken after brining. Can you estimate what the finished sodium content would be in milligrams? 7 and 3/4 teaspoons of salt seems like a lot.
Joe
Hi John, That would be hard to determine depending on the brining time etc. The chicken only absorbs a fraction of the sodium in the liquid. A guess would be 450 to 500 mgs per serving. I hope that helps and thanks for asking.
Joe
John Nihart
Very tasty, moist chicken with one hour of brining.
Joe
Hi John,
I’m glad you found my website and tried the brine.
Thank you for the comment.
Joe
Gretchen
This was wonderful! I’ve always heard about brining, but never tried it. Wow, I’m a believer! I didn’t have fennel seeds, so I subbed star anise. I also forgot to add the sugar. It was still delicious. Thank you, Joe.
Joe
Hey Gretchen,
I’m happy that you found my website and tried the brine recipe. Substituting ingredients is fine for the brine. The most important is the salt for moisture and tenderness.
Thanks for the nice comment.
Joe