21
My knowledge about the phenomenon itself is limited but I did see it mentioned in "Modernist Cuisine" (Nathan Myhrvold, p. 147)
Many recipes for foie gras, liver, sweetbreads, and other offal include a soaking step before cooking. For kidneys,
this step serves a very simple purpose: to remove any trace of the animal's bodily fluids. Recipes often call ...
14
I think what's really happening here is mostly physics, rather than any magical reaction between the meat and the "velvet" (i.e. egg and cornstarch; I'm going to use this term for brevity).
The largest effect is that the velvet adds a thin, clingy coating to the outside of the meat. When introduced to heat, that's providing a barrier to the movement of ...
13
Actually, it's a popular misconception that brining works because of osmosis. If it was really osmosis at work, plain water would work better than salted water. Kenji over at The Food Lab went into this a few months ago: http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/11/the-food-lab-the-truth-about-brining-turkey-thanksgiving.html
Here's the relevant bit:
To understand ...
12
Five refrigerated days is pushing well past the recommended boundaries--MeatSafety.org and FoodSafety.gov both recommend no more than 1-2 days.
The marinade would make no significant difference in the overall shelf life of the chicken. This applies even to acid or enzyme based marinades since the concentration and application is not uniformly controlled.
12
In India curd means plain yogurt.
12
Yes, it is perfectly safe (as long as you continue to thaw the meat in a safe manner, as in the refrigerator).
The marinade will not begin to have much effect until at least the outer layers of the meat are thawed, but it will not otherwise have any side effect. It may get slightly better penetration due to the changes in the texture of the meat from ice ...
11
It'll be fine. I've done this multiple times, even occasionally for more than 1 night and never had a problem, if anything it improves things as the marinade has time to work into the meat.
If you can, give it a stir a coupe of times (every 6 hours maybe?) to ensure even coating.
The acids in orange juice and most (?) marinades are generally too weak ...
11
Onions contain proteolytic enzymes, just like honey and certian fruits, which makes them ideal to help tenderize meat. They are a very common type of vegetable that's low in calories, and have a place in nearly every cuisine around the world.
One prime example is a dish from Japan known as Chaliapin Steak, which is a dish where you score the meat (make grid ...
10
Soy sauce, sake or mirin and sugar are the usual ingredients in a teriyaki sauce. The rice wines in particular are vital for an authentic teriyaki flavour.
So the question is somewhat moot: onions aren't usually found in teriyaki sauce anyway. The onions naturally add flavour to your marinade: if you like it, leave them in, if you don't, take them out. The ...
10
Soaking chicken in milk or buttermilk in the refrigerator overnight is a common practice when making Southern-style fried chicken. This practice supposedly tenderizes the chicken through the actions of enzymes naturally present in the milk. Yoghurt is used in a similar way in many Middle Eastern and southern Asian food ways.
The milk can be used alone, ...
10
If it's the same marinade you marinated the chicken in, I would be very careful. If it's not cooked to a high enough temperature, it is not safe to eat, as it has been in contact with raw chicken. It would probably be safe, but I would just mix up a new similar batch and use that to finish off the chicken. It's not worth risking salmonella to save the cost ...
10
Marinades are exclusively a 'surface treatment'. A penetrating treatment is a brine, and you will not use oils, but rather ingredients like salt, sugar, vinegar etc. which do produce a 'polarity' allowing it to penetrate deeply into the meat. (polarity, if I take your meaning correctly in this context, refers to the ionization of the solution allowing the ...
9
At the restaurants where I have made butter chicken, we used a very thick yogurt to make it. A Greek yogurt (or even sour cream) would work, provided it wasn't excessively sour.
If you're feeling more DIY, you could strain some regular yogurt through a coffee filter to make it a bit thicker and use that.
9
Swai and catfish are biologically related, but Tilapia is a Cyclid and as such quite far removed. I think the biological relation is not all that critical to their similar taste which you dislike though.
The taste of fish relies on a few factors such as:
Their living environment (Fresh, brackish, salt water)
The type of soil on the water bottom (silt, sand)...
9
First, there are two terms for 'soaking a piece of meat in liquid' and they are often used interchangeably and/or in error:
Marinate: A surface treatment of meat in which the meat becomes coated with a flavorful liquid called a marinade (the sauce is the 'marinade', the soaking is 'to marinate', though marinade is often used as the verb).
Brine: A deep ...
8
Some of this has already been said briefly in comments and the previous answer, but since the question is interested specifically in chemical mechanisms, here are a few more details.
The general process to think about first is diffusion. This is part of a general physical property of systems to move to a state of equilibrium. Suppose you had a container ...
7
Soy sauce is pretty salty. It sounds like a great deal of water diffused out of your chicken and into the marinade, which significantly changed the texture of the meat.
It's not uncommon to do something like this on purpose. When you make gravlax, for example, you cover a piece of salmon with quite a bit of salt and refrigerate it for a day or two. The salt ...
7
Hardly a queer question. We marinate in acidic liquids because it tastes good, really. As Alton Brown said in the Good Eats episode, "Raising The Steaks":
"Acid doesn't tenderize meat nearly as well as enzymes. But acids can help you tenderize your own food. That's because acids taste tangy, and tangy tastes tell our saliva glands to do their stuff, and ...
7
Brining and marination do two different things, contrary to popular belief.
Brines allow salt (plus possibly a very few other small flavor molecules) to penetrate into meat, at a rate of about 2-2.5 CM per 24 hours. These deeply season your meat, change its texture, and help allow it to retain moisture when being cooked.
Marinades are a surface treatment, ...
7
For a 30 min marinade, no, you don't have to put it in the fridge. In fact, many recipes will call for removing thick beef cuts from the fridge 20-60 min before cooking, to let the meat come up to room temperature.
That being said, there has been some testing of what sort of difference bringing a steak to room temperature makes, and the general concensus ...
6
In this study they compare using onion with meat over a roughly 30-day period in refrigeration. At the 30-day mark they have a sensory panel compare the 30-day vs non-onioned 4-day meat. The sensory panel concluded there was no significant difference, but a small fraction preferred the onion meat (30-day). This can suggest onions also have enzymes that ...
6
You can store marinated poultry in your refrigerator for 2 days. Beef, veal, pork, and lamb roasts, chops, and steaks may be marinated up to 5 days. (From http://www.foodsafety.gov/blog/marinades.html)
6
That release of moisture is due to breakage of chicken's cell structure, and further moisturing will not repair it - so it's not about the pores, and there's no "going back" from that state.
Still, if You cook Your chicken in a liquid with agents that affect osmotic pressure (salt, for example), it will lead to release of liquid through membranes, and ...
6
As long as your normal marinating time isn't significantly less than the defrosting time, then I believe that'll work fine. If the normal marinating time is much smaller, then you'll end up over-marinating your meat; if the marinade is acidic that would produce undesirable results. If it's the same or longer, then you'll be marinating for the right amount of ...
6
The main factors a base liquid can contribute to a marinade are:
Bulk -- enough volume to reach all of the food.
Acidity -- helps tenderize the surface of meats, and provides a bright flavor balance
Sweetness -- helps provide a flavor balance
Viscosity -- helps the marinade stick to or coat the target food
Enzymatic activity -- some liquids (such as ...
6
There seem to be two general expectations for the marinade here: (1) it would tenderize the steak, and (2) it would result in more flavor. The first of these is basically a culinary myth, and the second was probably undermined by what you did to the second (unmarinated) steak.
It's important to be clear about what marinades do and don't do. Marinades don'...
6
Marinades and Rubs are "surface treatments" only, they do not penetrate deeply into the meat.
A brine is a deep treatment, which does penetrate by way of osmosis.
For a quick explanation of this see Alton Brown's Good Eats
6
Pineapple contains Bromelain, which is "one of the most popular proteases to use for meat tenderizing." Since it's sold as a meat tenderizer, I'd say it really just depends on how long you marinate with it -- it's possible to over-tenderize something.
This warns about over marinating, and mentions recommended times:
The same process that tenderizes ...
6
The scientific foundation for this answer is in the fantastic post pointed out in the comments here.
How can I better ensure that the flavour seeps into the meat more
uniformly?
Basically there are two parts to this problem, as pointed out by the other post - one part is the composition of your flavor components that you want to penetrate the meat, and as ...
5
Yes, marinating, or letting sit with a rub (which is what you're doing) does help fish flavor.
However, for most fish, there's no point in marinating filets or steaks "for hours", since fish flesh is very porous and spices, acids, oils and other flavorings achieve maximum penetration in less than an hour. The exception to this is dense-fleshed fish, such ...
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