Replace half of the water in your brine with ice

Whether you plan to fry a big turkey of a cauliflower head, a good brine ensures that the final product is soft, moist and flavorful. Simple brine is little more than sugar, salt and water, but peppercorns, citrus peel, bay leaves and all kinds of plant parts can be used to make things more interesting. One universal truth about brine, however, is that you have to heat the liquid to get the crystalline solids in solution.

If your brine is intended for meat, it should be completely cooled before dipping pork chop, turkey breast or trout shrimp in the salty, sugary water. You can wait until that happens, or you can use ice cream.

Of course, you can not just pour a lot of ice in your brine; which will throw away your relationships and dilute your taste. Instead, divide by the amount of water your recipe requires, use it that volume to dissolve your salt and sugar, then add the rest of the water in the form of ice. The ice will cool the brine as it melts, bringing it to the right temperature and volume.

You will – I’m so sorry about this – have to do a little math to calculate the right amount of ice. Water expands as it freezes, meaning one cup of ice is not equal to one cup of liquid water. Fortunately, a milliliter of water weighs one gram at room temperature, so you only need to count your milliliters, in grams to convert and weigh out as many grams of ice. Let’s use this very simple brine recipe to illustrate:

Basic brine from ant soaps:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup salt
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 2 liters of cold water
• 3 bay leaves

The recipe instructs you to add and heat all the ingredients in the pot to dissolve the sugar and salt, and then wait for the brine to cool completely before proceeding. To speed up the process with ice, add the salt, sugar and leaves in the pot with a single liter of water and heat it and dissolve everything except the leaves.

Then add the ice cream. A quarter of water weighs 946 grams, so grab a bag of ice and weigh 946 grams of ice. Add it to the brine, stir to dissolve and cool, and lower your meat. No need to wait.