We've been soaking our deer in ice water and salt for years and I truly believe it provides the best meat. It draws a lot of the blood out turning the meat pink in color and there's no gamey taste. SOP has been placing the meat in a large cooler, filling just above the meat with cold water, dumping about 30lbs of ice on, then sprinkling approx 1/2lb of salt on. We drain and repeat every other day for about a week, then process. That process provides a much better taste than dry aging in a cooler IMO.
It works well on hogs as well and for a smelly boar you can add baking soda to the process, which will remove the smell and provide a great taste.
My Father-in-law does this so often for the local family's meat that he found a couple of old iron bath tubs and placed them near the skinning rack. He plumbed them, insulated the tubs, built a sheet metal base around them, and made some foam lids as well. He has a nice ice machine as well, so it's a pretty simple process to brine one around his place.
I also soak tenderloins in salt water in the fridge for a few days before cooking after a fresh kill.
R7RM...
I'm not quibbling here, but I have two problems with your post & process. I'd like some info back from you (or others) to clarify.
First issue: salt water doesn't "draw out blood". Salt (sodium chloride) in solution,
depending on its concentration, can result in sodium ions perfusing into the meat and/or water diffusing out of the meat. Blood, by which most people mean red blood cells (RBC's) isn't "in" the meat at all... what blood you don't drain out of the carcass in the butchering process remains in the blood vessels. Myglobin, the molecule in muscle cells that gives it its red color, is likewise trapped in the muscle tissue for the most part because the molecule is far too large to pass through cell membranes.
The red coloring you see in the ice water around your meat is mostly extravasated blood that diffuses out of the exposed blood vessels of the carcass. It has no effect on the meat, positive or negative.
The effect of the salt water on your meat may be real, however, depending on the salt concentration in your water bath. If the concentration is less than 0.9%, the water in the bath will soak into the meat and soften it up some. If the concentration is greater than 0.9%, it will "suck" water out of the meat, which will make it firmer and possibly tougher. But if it's exactly 0.9%, there will be no net movement of water or salt, and your meat will simply benefit from aging.
It's my belief that using hypotonic saline solution (less than 0.9%) will enhance the tenderness and possibly flavor of old/tough/gamy meat. But I don't know, as I don't use ice water aging. Yet.
Which brings me to my second issue... what concentration of salt are you using? I want to try it on the next big hog I kill.
