brine

When I was a wee lad, my Oma's second husband, Emile, used to call me "Briny".

("Oma" is Austrian for grandmother and "Emile" is broken-family for step-grandfather.)

For a long time I thought he was just mispronouncing Brian. Eventually I learned he was making fun of (1) my wee size -- as in briny shrimp -- and (2) my love for all things salty.

(This was the man who, when I asked him during a visit to Mexico what the word gracias meant, told me, "When you sit in the grass you get a grassy-ass.")

I love brined food. I love kalamata olives, for instance.

And I love that you can make otherwise dry meats hold their moisture by brining them first. But you really have to be far more conservative than I am by nature.

Not only should a brine be about 1/8 salt, and not 1/4, as I stress in my househusbanding article, but instructions to brine something "overnight" should be interpreted as 6-8 hours, and not 12-16. (And certainly not the 24 hours I first took it to mean!)

Better to err on the side of under-salting. You can find various tricks to moisten dry meat. But you just can't take the salty flavor out of over-brined food!