Food for Thought v1.0

As much as we love cooking, I thought it might be helpful to pass on some ideas from time to time.

Chicken by far is the preferred main ingredient in many of the meals we cook. About 6 months ago, we tried brining it for the first time. Since we grill at least once a week, the first experiment involved my homemade BBQ sauce (can't stand the store-bought crap) and the brined chicken. All I can say is WOW! What a difference soaking the chicken in a brine solution for 4 hours makes. Now we brine the chicken for all meals, be it taco night, Spiedies, chicken & pasta dishes... you name it! We have not experimented with flavored or spiced brines as of yet, but eventually will.

The solution for the brine is simple: dump 4 cups of cold water into a gallon ziplock, 1 TBS table salt, make sure the salt is completely dissolved, then dump the chicken breasts in & refrigerate for ~4 hours. After 4 hours, remove the chicken & rinse under cold tap water and towel dry. Make sure you dump the solution down the drain as it contains nothing but salt water and meat juice that has no value except to breed some nasty germs. The cooked chicken will be moist and juicy, and better yet have no residual salt taste.

Enjoy!