Chicken Brine

This brine is really easy to make and added a lot of flavor to the Pan-Roasted Chicken with Sweet Sausage and Peppers. It can be made ahead which is nice. It took me a while to get used to the scent of it- the lemon, honey and herbs smelled like a throat lozenge! I was a little worried that the chicken would taste like one too, but it was actually a really nice flavor. Because of the amount of salt in the brine I did not add additional salt to the chicken and it was still perfectly seasoned.

Update- when I made this in the beginning of August, I froze half of the unused brine for future use. Tonight I used it and it was as good as it was in the beginning of the month.

I have never used a chicken brine before, so I was curious to see what a 12-hour salt, water and spices soak would do for the chicken. I used this brine in the Buttermilk Fried Chicken recipe and it is totally worth going and doing this extra step if you have the time. I pretty much had everything needed on hand. About the only item I might not normally have on hand is the lemon, but I did in this case.

The resulting chicken is juicy, with tons of flavoring and perfect seasoning.

I made this recipe 2 times and the first time I left the chicken in for 18 hours by accident and it was way too salty, you definitely should try to stick as close to the recipe instructed 12 hours as possible.