Question

Starting weight           One day later

            Soaked in water                      50g                           52g

            Soaked in salt brine                48g                           60g

Most everybody explains the weight gain as osmosis. Salt moves into the meat by osmosis and then brings water with it. Discuss how the process of osmosis does or does not explain what happened to the chicken when it soaked.

Answer 1

Osmosis is a process wherein the water moves from lower concentration to the higher, through a semipermeable membrane. This is a common phenomenon and is utilized in many purposes. In case of meat, osmosis behaves quite differently.

Considering your case I:

As meat is soaked in normal water (without salt), due to difference in water concentration inside meat and outside, water flows into the chicken thus increasing the weight by 2g. This is an expected observation and goes well with the phenomenon of osmosis.

Case II:

Meat soaked in brine water (salty i.e. contains NaCl, usually 5%), behaves in a different way. It happens in unique way. As brine water enters meat, the concentration of salt increases inside the meat. As more and more brine water permeates, more NaCl enters meat, thus increasing the salt concentration inside it. Due to this, more water starts to enter meat with higher rate and thus meat swells a lot as compared to swelling caused by normal water.

It was an interesting experiment. Keep posting such quiz.

Thanks