Lesson 10
Salting Meat Ahead
Understand what salt does inside meat over hours in the fridge, when salting ahead helps and when to skip it.
Salting the day before
Some cooks salt a steak, a pork chop or a whole chicken the day before and leave it in the fridge overnight. This is dry brining: salt rubbed on the surface and left to work, rather than soaking the meat in salty water, which is a wet brine.
People do it for three reasons: seasoning that reaches further in, meat that holds on to more of its juice as it cooks, and a surface that browns well. To see why it works, and why timing matters, you need to follow the salt.