Go to the Article: The Truth About Marinades: Separating Fact from Fiction
Thank you!
As an aside, do you have a weight based % goal for just salting meat ahead of time? Like if I'm salting a steak hours before cooking. I've heard 0.5% by weight before, but not sure if this is true.
How about the idea that chamber vacuuming can enhance marination? Myth or fact??
I use a combination of jaccarding (which creates passages to the interior) combined with vacuum marinating, because I presume the vacuum will drive the marinade further into the food. It works for me, but I haven't done any experiments that show it is better than just jaccarding.
Why do they say the marinade should be short if in your pastrami recipe it should last seven days?
"Submerge prepared rib plates in brine for seven days.
Keep the brine and ribs refrigerated.
Turn rib plates over each day to ensure even brining."
https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/sous-vide-pastrami
What are your thoughts about food safety concerns when using a jaccard on thicker steaks, potentially pushing e. coli from the surface of the meat into the center? Surface e.coli on steak is killed by searing, but the e.coli contaminating the inside of the steak, which is almost never cooked to a temperature high enough to kill e.coli (greater than 160°F), could be a health hazard.
A marinade and a brine/cure are not the same thing.
Hi Valerie, there are a lot of scientific studies that show that vacuuming while tumble marinating does work to a degree. However the caveat there is that you must be able to pull a full vacuum. This is possible with large scale commercial equipment but most people do not have full scale chamber vacuum machines at home to achieve this. It is used mostly for those vac packaged pre-marinated pork items.
Thank you CS for this demystification
I've done some research, but there isn't much with scientific backing. 0.5% kosher coarse salt works for me. I adjust the time according to the thickness of the steak; example ~ 24 hours on a ~ 1.5 '' steak. Hoping to hear more from CS.
"Acids or enzymes only tenderize areas of direct contact. The protein bonds on and near the surface of the meat react to the acid or enzymes ... The more that surface breaks down, the mushier it becomes—but the interior remains firm."
...later...
"The alcohol has little effect on the tenderizing, but the acid in the wine can “cook” the meat through"
How does an acidic marinade "'cook' the meat through" if it only ever contacts the surface?
Cook your jaccarded steak sous vide, which will kill the bacteria at temps down to ~130°F.
https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html
A vacuum will not drive the marinade into the spaces created by jaccarding. The marinade may flow into those spaces over time, but that has nothing to do with vacuum packing (there typically isn't a vacuum inside the bag after it is sealed anyway)
No, vacuum packing doesn't enhance the penetration of a marinade into meat, which are largely impermeable (contrary to what manufacturers will tell you). It may work for things like vegetables and fruit.
FWIW, a palatable level of salt for most people is in the 0.75-1.5% (w/w) range (assuming the salt is evenly distributed in the food). I tend to bring things to 0.75% and then adjust to taste later. But I never do this with steaks, I just do it by eye. Watch some CS videos and you'll get an idea for how much to add (probably more than you think and certainly more than most home cooks add). Salt also penetrates meat fairly slow, ~1 inch in 12-24 hrs, so the center of that roast is going to have no salt.
What is the device to the far right? Is it simply a Swiss steak tenderizer or something more? I’m a gadget geek.
Some deep reading if you feel interested sir.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214289418302205
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6131373/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00307RV7A/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Good point. But since Sous Vide tenderizes cuts as well, I wonder if the jaccard is needed at all if the meat is to be treated to a SV bath before searing.
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