Brine Calculator

Water grams = litres × 1000 · Salt grams = water grams × salt percent ÷ 100 · Salt tablespoons = salt grams ÷ 18

litres

The volume of water, in litres — one litre weighs one kilogram

1000

Grams in a litre of water

salt percent

Salt as a percentage of the water's weight — 5 means 5 grams of salt per 100 grams of water

18

Grams in one tablespoon of table salt

Use it when a recipe says "a 5% brine" and leaves you to work out what that means, or when you have a bucket of water and want to know how much salt goes in it. It is also the page to check before following a brine recipe that specifies salt by volume, because a tablespoon of one salt is more than twice a tablespoon of another and the recipe rarely says which one it meant.

1. Four litres of water at 5%

   1. Four litres of water weighs 4 × 1000 = 4000 grams
   2. 5% of that by weight: 4000 × 0.05 = 200 grams of salt
   3. In tablespoons of table salt: 200 ÷ 18 = 11.11
   4. In teaspoons: 11.11 × 3 = 33.33, and in cups: 200 ÷ (18 × 16) = 0.69
   5. Stir until the water runs clear again — the salt dissolving is what you are watching for

   This is the same brine as "50 grams of salt per litre", which is how most brining recipes write it. The two phrasings agree because a litre of water weighs a kilogram: 5% of 1000 grams is 50 grams.

2. One cup of water at 2%

   1. One US cup is 0.2365882365 litres, which weighs 236.6 grams
   2. 2% of that: 236.6 × 0.02 = 4.73 grams of salt
   3. In tablespoons of table salt: 4.73 ÷ 18 = 0.26
   4. In teaspoons: 0.26 × 3 = 0.79 — a scant three quarters of a teaspoon
   5. Which is why portions this small are better weighed than spooned

   Under about one teaspoon the spoon stops being a measuring instrument: 0.79 of a teaspoon is somewhere between a rounded half and a level one, and the difference is 20% of the salt. Brining a single chicken breast is a job for a scale.

The percentage in a brine recipe is ambiguous, and this page resolves it one way: salt as a share of the water's weight. A true mass fraction — salt divided by salt plus water — gives 5% as 190 grams of salt in four litres rather than 200, and a third convention, grams of salt per litre of water, gives 250. The same words can therefore mean 190, 200 or 250 grams, and the reading used here is the one that matches the way brining recipes write it out in grams per litre. The 26% ceiling is not the solubility of salt but a conservative point below it: sodium chloride dissolves at 36 grams per 100 grams of water at 25°C, and this page stops at 26% to leave room for colder water, coarse salt with impurities, and sugar or other solutes that push the limit down. Above that the salt simply settles at the bottom of the container. The tablespoon, teaspoon and cup figures are all computed for table salt at 18 grams per tablespoon, so they are wrong for kosher salt — a tablespoon of Diamond Crystal kosher salt is only 8 grams, less than half — which is why the reference table below gives all three salts separately. Volume measurements of salt are also the least reliable in the kitchen, because a coarse flake salt settles differently in the spoon than a fine one does. Finally, brining is a food-safety matter rather than only a flavour one: it belongs in the fridge, not on the worktop.

How much salt is in a 5% brine?

50 grams per litre of water, so 200 grams in four litres — about eleven level tablespoons of table salt. Five per cent here means salt as a share of the water's weight, and a litre of water weighs a kilogram, which is why the figure comes out to the round 50 grams. If a recipe means 5% as a mass fraction instead, the same brine takes 190 grams. This calculator uses the first of those two readings.

How much salt is a tablespoon?

18 grams for table salt, 16 grams for Morton's kosher salt and 8 grams for Diamond Crystal kosher salt. That last one is why kosher salt cannot be substituted by volume: a recipe calling for 11 tablespoons of table salt needs 25 tablespoons of Diamond Crystal. A teaspoon is a third of those figures — 6 grams of table salt.

Can I use kosher salt instead of table salt in a brine?

Yes, but weigh it. Because of the difference in crystal size, one tablespoon of Diamond Crystal kosher salt is 8 grams against 18 for table salt, so a brine written in tablespoons of table salt comes out less than half as salty if you measure the same number of tablespoons of Diamond Crystal. The conversion between the two salts is a matter of weight rather than of spoons, so weighing the salt removes the question entirely; if you are measuring by volume, use the chart on this page for whichever salt you have.

How salty can a brine get?

This page stops at 26%, which is short of the point where salt stops dissolving. Sodium chloride dissolves at about 36 grams per 100 grams of water at 25°C, so water will take roughly a third of its own weight in salt; the 26% ceiling leaves margin for colder water, impure coarse salt and added sugar. Past the saturation point extra salt does not make a stronger brine, it just collects at the bottom of the container: the ratio of salt to water stops rising.

Should a brine be made with cold water or hot?

Hot water dissolves the salt far faster, cold water dissolves more of it. Warming a litre of water from 20°C to 25°C lifts the solubility only slightly — the difference between 26% and 36% here is margin, not temperature — so the practical reason to heat the water is speed, not capacity. If you heat it, cool it completely before the meat goes in, and keep the container in the fridge while it brines.

• Ingredient Weight Chart — salt, table and kosher — King Arthur Baking Company
• Sodium chloride — solubility in water — National Center for Biotechnology Information, PubChem