My kids came back to the house with a bucket of Autumn Olive berries (yummy), in my search for a recipe (cook them down to make a fruit butter, or make fruit leather) I stumbled upon instructions for brining meat, go figure. Autumn Olive farm raises pasture poultry and said that they brine all their meat before cooking (chicken, turkey, etc) and there was no excuse for dry meat. Hmmmm. So that day I brined a beef arm roast (1/4 C Kosher salt, 1/4 C sugar in one quart cold water. Soak meat 1 hour for every pound. Drained off the brine then I boiled it as usual. OH MAN!!!! It was soooo moist, tender and tasty!!!! My picky eater husband (who says he is not) noticed the difference ("It's better than the last one."), my son noticed the difference too (he ate half the roast).
I've done three so far, and I intend to brine all the meat I cook. I'm really curious to see how deer meat (very lean) turns out.
Why have I never heard of this??? It would have made my cooking sooo much better all these years.

Next Eureka! moment was the coconut I just opened. I looked on-line for tips on how to open the blasted things (my son always wants them). Tap around the bottom third with the back of a heavy cleaver and it just cracks open. Not for me. So I put it in the freezer, hoping to get it brittle so it would crack when I whacked it. It spent 2 weeks in the freezer (I was avoiding it). When I took it out low and behold it had developed it's own crack most of the way around! I put it in the fridge to thaw out. I took it out tonight, gave it a few whacks with my knife honing rod and the cap popped off! It left a nice white scalp of coconut meat still attached to the nut. I cut through that, poured out the juice and wondered how I was going to get the meat out of the bowl. Not a problem. I started at the bottom and cut through the meat up towards the shell opening and the wedges just popped off of the shell. Easy!

And while I am reminded of it...Brazil nuts are easy to extract from their shells if you freeze them and then let them thaw before you crack them. Many of them just fall out of the shell when I crack it, some still have a little bit of shell stuck to them, but they are a far cry from the vault that the never-frozen ones can be to extract.

I want to know why spell check wants to change "brining" into "braining", but when I tried "brinning" it wanted to change it to "brining"?

Brining was a new thing for me as well. I really just starting using it often with the new smoker. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE what it does to rabbit.

Let us know how the deer turns out.

Debbie, Is that cut of beef (arm roast) normally a tougher cut? And when you boiled it, was that slowlllly over the long haul? I've used a crock pot before but have never boiled meat and would like more details.

There is some tough stuff (ligaments, connective tissue) along with fat around the muscle in the arm roast that gets very tender with boiling. I usually cook it on low to low-medium heat on the stove for 1 1/2 - 3 hours. I usually cover meat with water when I boil it. With the last two brined roasts I only had the water half way up the roast and they turned out the same as when covered with water.

I brined a turkey in an apple cider brine recipe similar to this one http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=10000000780346

It was really moist and it infused some of the fruit flavor. I happen to love the taste of plain ol' turkey tho so I'll skip the fruit this time and just use the spices and see how that turns out. I used a cooler and set it on my back porch overnight (we live in IL so it's generally pretty cold by turkey day)

another recent discovery is coffee encrusted steaks....who knew!
1/2 cup coarsely ground coffee beans
1/4 cup kosher salt
1/4 cup coarsely ground black pepper
1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar

mix all together and coat steaks really well with it. Put them back in the fridge for at least 30 min, we did several hours and cook as usual. really nice! We make it in a gallon baggie and then put extra in the freezer right away and use it twice per batch.