Using Beer to Brine Meat
Let’s face it, sometimes you have a beer that doesn’t quite turn out, and maybe you don’t want to it. Maybe you made 5 Gallons of something, and you wish you had only made 2. Possibly some of your homebrew is OK, or past it’s prime, and not quite good enough to give away to friends.
I’m not a fan of wasting anything, and I happen to love cooking as well as brewing, and one day I decided to substitute the water in my brine recipe with beer, what a happy surprise! I’ve found that even some of the worst beer makes for great brine liquid, imparting a beer flavor to any kind of meat.
Probably one of my favorite uses for this is to brine chicken breasts, then cook them and use them in a salad.
What’s a Brine anyway?
A brine is basically a mixture of dissolved salt and sugar in a liquid. You soak the meat in the liquid for anywhere from 1 hour to a full day. The longer the meat soaks in the liquid, the more flavor from the brine gets into the meat. Caution though, it also gets saltier, so experiment a bit and go for shorter periods of time at first.
How do you make it?
Ingredients:
- 1/4 Cup of Kosher Salt
- 1/4 Cup of Brown sugar
- 4 Cups of liquid (beer or water or whatever)
Directions:
Heat up 1 cup of liquid in a small pot, then add the sugar and salt, and stir to dissolve. While it’s heating, put the other 3 cups of liquid into a zip lock bag or other container.
Once sugar and salt have dissolved, let the mixture cool a bit, and then pour it into the other 3 cups of liquid in the ziplock bag or container.
Add your meat. If you’re using a zip lock bag, squeeze the air out and seal it. If you’re using some other container, you may want to flip the meat at some point.
Then refrigerate until you’re ready to use it. Feel free to rinse it off before cooking, but that isn’t absolutely necessary.
You can increase the amounts in this recipe as much as you need, basically you want enough to cover / coat the meat. You can also add any spices or herbs that you want.
