How Brining Keeps Chicken Moist, and Why Salt Pushes Water In

If your chicken breast always comes out dry and you have been covering the problem with sauce, there is one move left before the pan. A breast that sat briefly in salted water comes out of the same pan, over the same flame, as a different thing entirely. Why should stirring salt into water make meat wetter?

How salt moves water

The idea that salt pushes water into meat sounds backwards, so how would salt move water at all?

Osmosis is the movement of water across a membrane from lower to higher solute concentration.¹

Put simply, water drifts toward the saltier side, and salt is not shoving water into the meat by magic so much as the concentration gap is pulling it there. The place that pull is easiest to see in a kitchen is the cutting board.

Salt draws water out of cells by osmosis, which is why salted vegetables release liquid.²

Salt a cucumber and before long the board is wet, because the same pull is sending water the other way, and in a chicken sitting in brine that same pull runs a little more complicated.

Why brined chicken ends up wetter, not drier

If osmosis were the whole story a brined chicken should dry out the way the cucumber does, and yet it comes out the opposite way, which means salt is doing something beyond moving water around.

Brining seasons and moistens meat as salt dissolves some muscle proteins and helps the tissue retain water.³

Once some of the muscle protein has dissolved out, the structure left behind is looser and better at holding water inside it, and a brined breast lasting through the cook comes down to that loosened structure.

Wet brine, dry brine, same underlying trick

A dry brine, salt rubbed straight onto the meat with no water at all, looks like the opposite move. The chemistry underneath is the same.

A dry brine seasons meat as salt draws out moisture that then dissolves and is reabsorbed with dissolved proteins.⁴

The salt draws moisture out first, exactly as it would in a wet brine, and what differs is what comes next, when that moisture, now carrying dissolved protein, gets pulled back in. And where has the salt itself got to by then?

Brines and pasta water season food by diffusion, as salt moves from high to low concentration.⁵

The salt does not stay bunched at the surface but spreads evenly through the meat, so a brined bird tastes about as seasoned near the skin as it does in the middle, which is a different bird from one that is salty outside and bland within.

Try it at home

Both methods below run on the same principle, so pick whichever fits your fridge space and the time you have left.

• For a wet brine, dissolve salt in water at a ratio such as 1/4 cup of salt per quart (about 60 grams per liter), enough to taste distinctly salty.
• Submerge the chicken fully in the brine, refrigerated, for 30 minutes to a few hours depending on the cut's thickness.
• For a dry brine, rub salt directly over the chicken's surface and refrigerate it uncovered on a rack for several hours to overnight.
• If a wet-brined chicken keeps coming out too salty on the surface, shorten the brining time or weaken the brine next round instead of rinsing the raw bird. One salty batch does not mean the method is wrong. A dry-brined chicken can go straight to the pan.
• Pat the chicken dry before cooking either way, since a dry surface is what lets it brown properly.
• Reduce or skip additional salt in the recipe afterward, since the brine has already seasoned the meat throughout. Cut a slice and taste it, and you will find it gets by with no sauce at all.