Looks crisp outside, but inside this chicken is dry.
- First, the ability of the meat to hold onto moisture
increases. You can imagine meat as a series of long,
skinny toothpaste tubes tied together. As you cook the
meat, the tubes of toothpaste get squeezed, pushing out
valuable juices. Breading will help mitigate this effect to a
degree by slowing down the transfer of energy to the
meat, but a significant amount of squeezing is still going
to occur regardless of how well breaded the chicken is.
Myosin is one of the key proteins responsible for this
squeezing action, so by dissolving it, you prevent a lot of
moisture loss from taking place.
- Second, brining alters the texture of the meat by
