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I'm making fried chicken and the first step of most recipes involve soaking the chicken in a buttermilk and salt brine to tenderise it.

However, I have had problems getting the salt to dissolve in the cold buttermilk. I typically use a 5-6% salt brine, so it's not like I'm exceeding the salt saturation limit of water (typically at 30% from what I read).

I've thought of the following solutions:

  1. Heating the buttermilk up, and dissolving the salt. But I'm concerned that this will cause the buttermilk flavor to change.

    1. Using a immersion blender/whisk to stir the salt into the buttermilk.
user60513
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    Buttermilk isn't water, it already has many things in it which will reduce the amount of salt it can take. It also has fat, so less water per unit of volume. – GdD Dec 14 '17 at 09:25
  • What kind of salt are you using? – Stephie Dec 14 '17 at 12:52
  • I'm using coarse sea salt, which is slightly smaller than kosher salt. – user60513 Dec 14 '17 at 15:09
  • How long are you waiting? Crystals that big will take time to dissolve. – Joshua Engel Dec 14 '17 at 16:37
  • if you want to dissolve the salt on something you should use a finer ground salt, like table salt... Coarse salt is usually for situations where you don't want to dissolve the salt quickly. – Luciano Dec 14 '17 at 17:04

2 Answers2

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You should just heat it (your first proposed solution), and not worry about changing flavor, because if buttermilk is going to change flavor with heat then it is going to change flavor when you cook the chicken.

paparazzo
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Have you tried dissolving the salt before adding it to the buttermilk?

I would suggest dissolving the salt using boiling water. Put the salt in a small heat-proof container, add boiling water, and stir gently until the salt is dissolved.

After the solution has cooled, add it to the buttermilk.

Just remember that you don't want an excessive amount of water - just enough to dissolve the salt.

Cindy
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