Test Kitchen Secrets

A well-roasted chicken is a beautiful thing, but you can perfect it with one simple step.

- Adam Bush

Dry-brining meat – where you heavily salt meat up to 24 hours before cooking – is a technique that many home cooks leave to the professionals, as it can seem a little daunting (all that salt!) and time-consuming. Trust me though, it’s easy and it will take your Sunday roast to the next level. 

Recently I went to a cooking demonstration by American chef Samin Nosrat, and she conducted a simple experiment to show how beneficial salting in advance can be. She sliced up a ripe tomato, salted it and left it for five minutes to sit. After the five minutes she then sliced another ripe tomato and salted it, and then got us to eat both, to directly compare the two. The one that had been salted longer was sweeter, with a much more pronounced depth of flavour, whereas the recently salted tomato was seasoned but lacking in that same deep tomato flavour. 

The main misconception about dry brining is that covering meat in salt will make it dry. Salt does draw water out of the meat, but this is eventually re-absorbed along with the salt, meaning the meat will be moist and beautifully seasoned throughout (it will also pick up the flavours of any herbs or spices you use in the dry brine). Also, the salt changes the structure of the protein, starting to break it down, meaning juicier, more tender meat as it retains moisture more effectively.