Sugar absorbed by meat when brining.

[Tengil]

Hi there!
I've made pulled pork recently. I brined the meat with excellent results, but I'm curious as to how much sugar actually is absorbed by the meat from the brine.
Any ideas?

[nobrah]

It's impossible to say without doing a chemical composition test on a sample of the meat. But I wouldn't worry about absorbed sugar significantly changing the macros.

[shawnxxx]

Unless you're really particular about your calorie and sugar intake I wouldn't worry about it. But, if you are, don't add so much sugar?

[Tengil]

I'm not really particular about my sugar intake per se. It's just for calculating the macros of the pulled pork. I used ~31 grams of brown sugar in 1 qt of water, so I assumed 12 grams was absorbed.
My guess is perhaps even less is absorbed?
It's true though, in the big scheme of things, it doesn't change the total macros a helluva lot if 10 grams more or less is absorbed. I'm a curious person, that's all

[surfeatliftsurf]

Your best estimate is to measure the water you discard after you remove the meat from the solution and assume the rest was absorbed. Ex:

31g sugar/quart of water = total solution
.75 quarts remaining after meat is brined = .25quarts of water/sugar absorbed
31g * .25 = 7.5g sugar absorbed.

I wouldn't do any of this IRL, btw, just throwing you an answer in case you're really so OCD as to count brine calories in your macros.

[fastnoypi]

if you want to try to be scientific about it, weigh an empty pan, dump the leftover brine in, boil it away, weigh it again. Subtract from the weight of the sugar at the beginning. A little too much effort but as the other said, its probably an insignificant amount of sugar absorbed.