I smoked a pork belly and my wife didn't care for it initially. However, after it sat in the refrigerator overnight, she thought it improved substantially if she dipped each bite in a bit of soy sauce. Which rang a bell. Bill aka Wino talked about using soy sauce to brine turkey last year.
To quote:
wino wrote:
Further to the brining: I have had good/interesting results using Kikkoman Soy Sauce for brining. In Canada, in the 1.89 liter liter from Costco, it is 38% sodium so I have been diluting it with water at various concentrations: 1:1, 1:2, !:3, etc. I prefer a less salty brine and have been most pleased with 1:4 left overnight and then rinsed & dried before cooking. My next experiment will be to substitute my home-made chicken broth (no salt in it) for the water; however, this seems a little cannibalistic - - - 
And I am thinking that something on this line would do for a pork shoulder or pork belly that I was going to smoke. There was a bit of discussion concerning the amount of salt content depending on the dilution of the soy sauce, but since I'm after taste, not math, I will likely follow Wino's suggestion of 1:4 for soy sauce to water ratio, maybe up to 1:3, but no more than that, because I respect his taste buds.
Since I am, by nature, lazy and the pork belly or shoulder is usually a bit thick, running 2 or 3 kilos, I will likely brine it overnight in the fridge, going for a 10 to 12 hour brine. So lower salt over a long period of time is less likely to end up as one of those fiasco's I occasionally indulge in.
