HELP cooking emergency in progress!

[rachelmanija]

While house-sitting, I attempted a brine recipe for pork chops from the Lucques cookbook. It calls for dissolving 1/2 cup kosher salt and 1/3 cup sugar in 2 cups hot water, then adding three quarts cold water and various spices, then soaking the chops overnight

Comments

[rhienelleth]

What vom_marlowe said.

Also, when I soak my pork chops in a similar brine, they soak for an hour before cooking, and are quite suitably salty/sweet. I think overnight is waaaaaay too long, personally.

[sartorias]

In my experience, powdered sugar is only trustworthy in icing. It behaves oddly in just about anything else.

You could soak the chops in cold water again, but as soon as the water is cloudy, change it. Then you might slow cook the chops with lots of veg, onion, garlic, even wine, because the remaining salt will infuse all those things.

[badnoodles]

Add a cut potato to the soaking water, if you can. I know it works in soup - potatoes are apparently salt magnets.

[rachelmanija]

Hee! I once successfully convinced my Catholic step-mom that "koshering" was a brining process, and so got her to declare to my Jewish grandmother, "And next time, I'll make a kosher ham!!

[smillaraaq]

I'd second the suggestions to rinse well and do soaks in plain water, and try braising them with some sweet/starchy veg (onions, carrots, potatoes, etc.) to try to balance out the saltiness.

Unfortunately, the powdered sugar substitution would be enough to throw the recipe way off -- most commercial powdered sugar has a fair bit of cornstarch added, plus it's just so, well, fluffy that it doesn't match granulated sugar measure for measure unless you're going by weight. You'd need to use 1.75 times as much powdered sugar, tightly packed, if you're substituting for granulated sugar.