Is there a way to estimate consumption of salt when dealing with the boiled meat? I.e. I had 500 grams of meat, boiled in 2 litres of water, with 5 grams of salt diluted in that water. If the water is to be discarded, how much salt will be left in the meat?
Meat – Salt in boiled meat
boilingmeatsalt
Related Solutions
Here is a report entitled "Change in sodium content of potato, pasta and rice with different cooking methods".
So the "scientific answer" is:
- The sodium content in pasta cooked with different levels of salt increased approximately linearly with the amount of salt added to the cooking water. Pasta cooked in 4g salt/100g raw took up on average 28 mg Na/100g whereas when cooked in 40g/100g raw this increased approximately 10 fold to 230 mg Na/100g.
HTH!
PS: This may help you forget the Na intake temporally
I think your best bet is to change your recipe. While trying to figure out the exact process that sometimes makes your soup work does indeed sound like an interesting science project, it doesn't sound like its going to yield a reliable recipe. Especially since you've got to deal with supermarket chicken from suppliers that may change their processing procedures whenever it suites them—maybe even from package to package, depending on which plant it came from, or the specifics of the chickens the plant processed that day.
There are easy, reliable ways to get salt into chicken. The following two will get you salty chicken, every time you do it:
- Put your chicken (chopped up or whole) in the fridge submerged in a 13% brine for a day, and you'd at that point have chicken which would be (once cooked) inedibly salty (among other problems).
- You could chop your chicken fairly thin, and pack it (again in the fridge) in kosher salt. Then it'd become dry, and also very salty.
Of course, that'll be far more salty than you want. So you'll want to scale back—use a 5–6% brine, put it in only for a few hours, etc. But that will get flavorful chicken every time.
Then, to keep your soup base from being salty:
- rinse the brined or salted chicken before adding to the soup (to remove any salt resting on the surface)
- keep salting of the soup to a minimum.
- don't overcook the chicken, that'll force more liquid from it.
- make sure to use low-sodium chicken broth. Normal store-bought broth/stock is pretty salty.
- if too much salt leaches from the chicken, cook the chicken separately and drain it.
</rant>
edit: random suggestions since the above apparently doesn't work
- Commercially, many things are quick-frozen (e.g., fish) to prevent ice crystal damage. It would seem to follow then, that since you're trying to cause ice crystal damage, you want to freeze as slowly as possible. Easy way to do this would be (assuming your chicken is already under 40°F e.g., in the fridge) to insulate it before throwing it in the freezer. So, put it in a freezer bag, but then wrap the freezer bag in some kitchen towels, then toss that in the freezer.
- In previously-frozen (commercially) chicken, there may be some anti-ice-crystal additives, I have no idea. Previously-frozen isn't always sold frozen. Check the package, it should say (probably in tiny print).
- You could try a second thaw/freeze cycle (just make sure to thaw in the fridge, or in cold water, not the microwave, for food safety reasons—keep it under 40°F). This will certainly increase the effects of freezing (and would normally be avoided for flavor and texture reasons)
- This isn't freezing, but may accomplish the same goal: you could try one of the 40+-blade meat tenderizers.
Also, as a final note, it turns out that a lo of how we (humans) perceive flavor has nothing to do with the food. The ambiance, how we're feeling that day, etc. affect perceived flavor substantially. Keep this in mind, since you're not using e.g., a salinity meter, its possible you're chasing down differences that aren't due to the food itself.
Best Answer
Short answer: Not really.
Doing some armchair math, you have two liters of water and 55g of salt, which is about 0.25 liter. That gives you 12.5% the amount salt as there is water in your original solution. The logical solution would be to then cook the meat, then measure the quantity of salt afterwards, right?
However...
That would assume that the absorption and dilution were one-way, i.e.: water-to-meat (as in reverse osmosis to filter water, for instance). In reality, it goes both ways.
The meat, while cooking, will release blood and other body fluids (like oil from the fat) which also contains a certain amount of sodium, and so your post-cooking solution will be "dirty" and that makes it nigh-impossible to get an accurate reading of how much sodium was absorbed vs. released.