Brine is water with dissolved salt.
Brine is a term whose first meaning mentioned in the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ) refers to water that has dissolved salt . By extension, the liquid released by certain salty things and the preparation made with water, salt and other ingredients to preserve food is also known as brine.
If we focus on the level of chemistry , we can say that brine is H2O that has a high concentration of NaCl that is dissolved. If this concentration is very high, as occurs in certain lakes, it does not allow life to exist in the water.
Uses of brine
Thanks to its properties, brine has multiple uses. It can be used for cleaning tasks since the salt helps purify the materials. Because it has a very low freezing point, brine is also used as a secondary refrigerant in some systems . The brine, on the other hand, helps melt the snow that covers the roads, facilitating the movement of vehicles.
The most common use of brine, however, is in the field of food . Brine allows food to be cured and preserved and is even used to prepare certain products .
It is important to know that, within the gastronomic field, it is increasingly used as a method to find other nuances of flavor in dishes and recipes than as a preservation method.
It is common for olives to be preserved in brine.
Classification according to type
In the same way, in this field of gastronomy , we must establish that there are fundamentally two different types of brine:
- Wet brine . Through it, what is done is to introduce a food in salt but that is dissolved in water. It can be carried out both by immersion and by injection, directly applying the solution to the product. In addition to all the above, we cannot ignore that this procedure is used, above all, to brine the olives, to season them.
- Dry brine . It basically consists of proceeding to introduce a product in salt, to "submerge" it, with the clear objective that part of the water inside can be extracted. Using this technique, which is carried out with sea salt and requires that the food be perfectly covered on all its sides, the preparation of smoking any fish is undertaken, for example. Sometimes, in addition to salt, other spices are also used.
Preparations with brine
The list of products and recipes that are presented having been prepared with the brine method is very extensive, since it is used in many corners of the world. Specifically, among the best-known and most flavorful proposals are anchovies in brine or oven -baked brine knuckle.
Food that remains submerged in brine is called pickled . This modifies its flavor and increases the conservation period. Typically this brine includes more than water and salt, featuring vinegar, pepper, garlic, and other ingredients.
In some regions , for example, a brine made from water, salt, crushed garlic cloves, and bay leaves is used to marinate beef while it is roasted.