Does soaking chicken in water before cooking remove salt?

Answer 1

Yes it would help to remove salt. You may want to do this a couple of times with fresh water each time depending on how much salt you want to remove from the chicken.

The problem with soaking a raw whole chicken is that you spreading the exsisting bacteria from the cavity to all over the chicken. Modern advice from both US and UK health departments advise not to wash or soak a whole chicken before roasting. Some supermarkets use saline solutions to increase the weight of its cheaper lines of chicken breasts. At the end of the day you get what you pay for.

Answer 2

The salt water is the most basic brine for poultry. It causes water and the salt to be drawn into the chicken's flesh to make the poultry more juicy. Instead of just salt, this would be an excellent time to add other flavorings to the brine...sugar, juniper berries, whole allspice berries, pepper berries, etc. Brining is an easy way to get extra flavor into meat as well as moisture.

Answer 3

Generally speaking, salt toughens protein. So adding salt before cooking, whether in marinades, by other types of soaking, or in various other ways, is probably not the best way to go when it comes to foods you want to be tender.

For this reason you don't usually salt eggs when beating for omelettes or scrambled eggs.

There are many exceptions to this rule. One great example is seasoning the outside of a thick fillet of meat before searing on a high heat; this will give a caramelized crust which is possibly the most delicious part of any thick cut of any kind of meat, from fish to beef, also providing a beautiful textural contrast with the tender inner meat.

On the other hand, you'd never season cubed meat you intended to slow-cook as a casserole or stew; it could end up disastrously tough.

Some offal and other kinds of meat need to be soaked, washed, or rinsed in brine. If in doubt about handling meat, it's always a good idea to ask your butcher, or the person in your grocery store who's in charge of the meat department.

Using salt and other seasonings at the table at the time you eat will, of course, affect the flavour of the food, but not usually the texture.