Background Every culture has its own unique way of preparing food. But whether a recipe is Chinese or American, Italian or Indian, some of the main dishes usually call for a marinade. Some of the original marinades from several centuries ago were briny very salty liquids, such as seawater, which helped preserve foods before refrigeration was available. Whatever they are made of, marinades are usually meant to preserve, tenderize and flavor foods.
In this activity you'll test how various ingredients affect the adsorption yes, with a "d" of a marinade ingredient onto the surface of a food. The word "adsorb" is used to describe the process by which a substance adheres to the surface of an object, as opposed to being absorbed into it. The ingredients you'll test are salt, vinegar and sugar. Salt obviously makes foods salty and sugar makes them sweet, but how well do these ingredients work for making a marinade be adsorbed to food?
Vinegar is an acid—other acids you might find around the kitchen include lemon juice and orange juice. Does something acidic make a good marinade? Along with these ingredients, instead of actual seasoned marinades you'll use a food dye so you can see the level of adsorption on the food. Observations and results Did the tofu cubes in the cup with the vinegar become the most dyed? Were the other tofu cubes less dyed, but all dyed similarly to each other?
Vinegar is an acid, like lemon juice and orange juice. Acids can cause foods such as meats to be broken down, or tenderized. You may have heard people warn not to use too much vinegar in a marinade. This is because the acid can tenderize the food so much that it becomes mushy! Salt works well in marinades for meat, too, because it helps break open the cells, allowing the marinade to penetrate into the tissue.
Sugar in marinades helps the food taste sweet, but does not help marinades be adsorbed into food as much. DW: This is the best thing — when we're not believed — because, of course, we back everything up with science. Years ago, we started feeling like marinating doesn't seem do much, particularly when you're doing chicken or meat — which are the things people marinate most often. We decided to do an experiment. We took boneless skinless chicken breasts in four different marinades: soy, yogurt, red wine, and lemon and garlic.
We left them in there for 18 hours. After that time, the marinade had penetrated less than between millimeters, which is less than a tenth of an inch, and that's after 18 hours. We took the chicken breasts, shaved off the amount the marinade had gone in — the outer three milliliters — and roasted them along with other chicken breasts that had not been marinated.
We had people taste them. No one could taste any difference at all. DW: It was a blind tasting with a large panel of 30 testers. The only way you could taste any difference was if you tasted one that had not had that little tiny bit shaved off.
Even then there was only a faint difference. Again, this was after 18 hours in marinade. DW: It's a long time; and no one wants to marinate anything that long. All marinating does is put a tiny bit of flavor on the outside part of whatever it is you're marinating. The other thing people say is that marinating tenderizes things. If you use acid — or the other thing people often use is papaya juice — theoretically, it will tenderize the meat, but only to the same depth as those marinades penetrated.
All it does is make the outside mushy. No matter how long you marinate, you're only going to get mushy exterior and a tiny bit of flavor on the outside. Instead, cook the food and then put the flavor on it afterwards. DW: Brine will carry salt into the interior of whatever you're brining at a different rate depending on what it is.
The salt does season whatever you're brining and also makes it stay moister when you cook it. There are two items that are water soluble that you might have in your marinade: onion and garlic. If you have a marinade with onion and garlic, some of that flavor will get further into the meat. But all the spices, herbs, and most of the things that you want to add flavor, they're all fat soluble and don't penetrate meat or fowl.
If you're marinating something like tofu, it has a very loose structure, so the marinade will penetrate the tofu. However, if you're marinating meat or chicken, you're not going to get much difference. If you put a lot of salt or soy sauce in your marinade, you will get a seasoned piece of meat or fish, but it won't have any additional flavor. FL: I'm still having trouble digesting this.
I'm not sure I entirely buy it, but I'll buy that we have some common ground where I can accept that the brine, salt and soy sauce work. What is another myth that you have busted?
DW: Here's another one that people have been doing forever on faith that it works. That is, when you roast a turkey or chicken, if you baste it, it will end up moister and juicier because you've been basting it. Simply salting meat and letting it stand may not have the romance of more complicated marinades, but it works. Are you a food geek? Why grilled meat tastes so good.
Buy This Now: Figs, with 12 recipes. Russ Parsons is a former Food writer and columnist and the former editor of the Food section at the Los Angeles Times. Wes Avila to open a new Mexican restaurant in Hollywood next month. Andy Baraghani puts his bold, stylish spin on Thanksgiving classics. All Sections. About Us. B2B Publishing. Puncturing the meat for the marinade to penetrate gives an uneven result, with the further undesirable side effect of allowing the meat to lose even more juices while cooking.
Thus, flat cuts of meat benefit most from tenderizing marinades. Place meat in a heavy zip-top bag with the air squeezed out and turn it often to be sure all surfaces benefit from the marinade. Some slaughterhouses now inject papain into the animals just before slaughter. The injected papain is carried through the bloodstream to all parts of the animal and is later activated by the cooking process. This sometimes results in a mushy piece of meat due to the enzyme destroying too much of the muscle fiber firmness.
The newest method being researched is a machine which immerses tough cuts of meat into a water bath and then sends a shockwave through the meat, breaking down tough fibers. Physicochemical and sensory properties of sous vide meat and meat analog products marinated and cooked at different temperature-time combinations. International Journal of Food Properties.
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