Saturday, January 13, 2007

Brining without a refrigerator

Over the holiday with my fridge was packed with food but I needed to brine a pork loin. Hm mm, no room.

My brine bucket is pretty big so I added lots of ice to the brine and monitored it with my digital thermometer. An alert was set if the water got over 33 degrees. The kitchen wasn't very warm so it stayed that way all day; thus saving me lots of space.

The pork loin? Moist and yummy.

How creative are you? Share some of your ideas.

2 comments:

sylvie1950 said...

That's a great idea.

Over the holidays I brined a turkey using my large igloo water dispenser. I first added a bag of ice to the bottom, then lined the container with a trash bag. I added the brine and turkey and covered these with a jumbo plastic bag of ice. I put the ice in the ziplock bags to keep from diluting out the brine. The igloo cover tops it and I put it outside overnight. Since it was pretty cold outside here in L.A. just before Christmas, I knew as long as my ice was intack I was ok.

Any warmer and I would probably need to have the temp probe to verify the temps. Next time.

Deborah Eley De Bono said...

Sylvie, your ziplock bag was a great idea, never thought of the melting ice diluting the brine. Being outside might make me a bit nervous, we've possums in the neighborhood.