Basic brines

Why brine?  Because it makes things taste better.  Not necessary for everything, just low fat items such as chicken breast and pork loin.  You can flavor your brine with whatever you want, but I would keep the sodium and sugar content at the levels indicated, i.e. if you want to use soy sauce, use correspondingly less salt to maintain the same concentration.  Also, I wouldn't brine with black pepper or acidic ingredients: we have a mental association with hot dogs, ham, and spam with that flavor.  Because I prefer not to flavor my brine, most people never notice that my food is brined at all other than asking, "why is your chicken breast as juicy as dark meat?"

Concentration of the brine is what counts: YMMV of how much you need based on the shape of your meat and the shape of your container.

Saturated quick brine for ~ 1lb of meat:

• 3TB DCK salt (note: if using other brands of salt, look up the sodium/volume measure and adjust accordingly.  E.g. if using Morton's kosher use 2 TB.  Don't use iodized.)
• 3TB sugar (tip: baker's sugar dissolves easier)
• 1.5C water

 Mix everything up cold, rubbing the crystals with your fingers to dissolve them.  Add meat.  Brine time will vary based on the shape of your food: for small pieces, like 10mm-25mm cubes for stir-frying or slices for 水煮, 30 minutes is fine.  Larger chunks, like 25mm+ cubes or whole chicken breast will require 45 minutes to an hour.  For very large items, I recommend a long brine, which is listed below.

8 hour to 1 week brine:

• .25C DCK salt
• .25C sugar
• 3C water

For long brine, you REALLY want to follow my advice about not using acids or peppercorn or iodized salt.  This is stronger than the classic brine you'll typically find online that would be 4C water for that much salt and sugar, but this works better in my experience. Again, the typical complaints about spamminess aren't due to the brine so much as the weird things people like to put in their brine.  As a side effect, this helps your meat keep longer, but don't come sue me later when you get food poisoning from chicken sashimi that's been sitting in brine for 3 months.

Brined food will not need to be seasoned with salt anymore, but for asian foods involving fish sauce or soy sauce you typically won't have to adjust.  Just start with half as much and work your way up if you're paranoid, but don't be surprised when you end up using the original recipe amount at the end: the sugar in the brine does a lot to counteract the saltiness.