"Reg" schreef in bericht
.. .
A. Kesteloo wrote:

I used to measure the amount of salt in a brine with an raw egg (first
check if the egg is fresh)

When the egg floats, the brine is good. (brine for 4 to 5 days)

I now measuring with an egg is not exact, so I bought a brine tester
(scale 0 To 100%) (http://www.alliedkenco.com ) when checking, an egg
floats at about 40 %.

I have two questions:

Does 40% sound ok to you?

There is no single brine strength or brine time that works for every type
of food, although I've seen a few very old recipes that imply there is.
There's wide variation based on everything including individual
preference.
The floating egg method refers to the amount needed to achieve a certain
degree of *preservation*, which is usually not why people use brines these
days. They're instead used to improve quality.


Does anyone know how to convert this scale to the baumé scale?

Not to be contentious, by why would you want to do this? The baume
scale is a rather strange animal with two separate modalities, one for
liquids lighter than water and one for liquids heavier than water.
It's basically an obsolete measurement scale.

--
Reg email: RegForte (at) (that free MS email service) (dot) com


Thank's for your quick response.



For some reason, the Dutch recipes I got use the baumé scale. I would like
to convert them so I can use them.

Most of the time I smoke loin, turkey breast, parts of the pig belly and
parts of ham (about 1.5 kg) Not to eat when it is holt, but cold on a
sandwich. So preservation is what I'm looking for. The egg and 4 to 5 days
brining is a recipe I learned from my Polish father in law. I think he is
cheating, 5 days is probably not enough. I think he converted his original
recipe when he got a freezer (now using the salt for taste)



Adriaan