Does marinating actually make a difference?
‘Marinate the meat for at least an hour, preferably overnight.’ A similar sentence appears in so many recipes that I simply assumed, blindly, that it was true. But now it turns out that the opposite is true?
We’ve all ignored the marinating rules at some point and marinated something for one hour instead of six. In fact, when I’m in a hurry, I just throw all the ingredients together and put everything straight into the oven or pan. And how lucky, because apparently it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.
America’s Test Kitchen, an American institution that examines every cooking technique in detail, marinated chicken breast in four different marinades: soy, red wine, lemon and garlic. They left each of those marinades to soak in for eighteen hours, and after that time the marinade had penetrated just under a millimeter into the meat. After eighteen hours! The chicken was then roasted alongside chicken breast that had not been marinated. The result? No one could taste the difference.
Extra tender?
And what about acid? Yogurt or buttermilk is supposed to make chicken super tender, right? Yes, but only that outer millimeter. The longer you leave it, the softer and mushier that outer millimeter becomes. What does work is brining: salt dissolves in water and therefore penetrates farther into the meat. So if there’s a lot of salt in your marinade, your meat will also become saltier, but the other ingredients don’t impart much flavor. Except onion and garlic: they also dissolve in water and can therefore penetrate farther into the meat.
Tofu is an exception to the rule. Because of its loose structure, a marinade penetrates much faster, so marinating tofu does make sense. But for chicken and meat—the things we marinate most often—it makes absolutely no difference. Mind blown! The next time you don’t make a recipe because you don’t feel like starting to marinate in the morning, just start in the evening and skip the long marinating time. It really will taste just as good.
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