# Anyone into velveting meat with baking soda?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-into-velveting-meat-with-baking-soda/768523>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [October 14, 2016, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-into-velveting-meat-with-baking-soda/768523 "2016-10-14T16:34:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sitchensis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sitchensis/32/4892_2.png) [@sitchensis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sitchensis)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2016, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-into-velveting-meat-with-baking-soda/768523/1 "2016-10-14T16:34:18Z")

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I’ve been trying to recreate the texture of the meat that is in a lot of americanized Asian food dishes, beef and broccoli, stir fry. In doing way too much Google research I came across a term for chemically tenderizing meat called velveting. It seems like there are a lot of ways to do it but the simplest was to do it with baking soda.  
The other night I tried it with chicken breast. I sprinkled about a tablespoon of baking soda on thinly sliced chicken and mixed it up. I let it sit for 30 minutes and then rinsed it with water, vinegar, and then water again. When I cooked it into a stir fry it came out perfect. The meat was soft with none of the graininess or dryness that chicken breast can get in homemade stir fry.  
From my reading I’ve come to understand that it’s not a cure-all. It’s meant to take a cheap tuff piece of meat and turn it into the soft slightly rubbery meat that we all know and love from the local Chinese place.

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**Author:** ![cher3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/da6949/32.png) [@cher3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cher3)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2016, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-into-velveting-meat-with-baking-soda/768523/2 "2016-10-14T17:38:32Z")

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Recipes I’ve used have suggested tossing the sliced meat with cornstarch, soy sauce and wine or vinegar. This achieves a similar result without having to rinse it. You just need to take the extra corn starch into account when you are making the sauce for the rest of the dish.

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**Author:** ![teela\_brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d9b06d/32.png) [@teela\_brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teela_brown)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2016, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-into-velveting-meat-with-baking-soda/768523/3 "2016-10-14T17:38:44Z")

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I haven’t tried that. I did try “velveting” by marinating the sliced meat with egg white, rice wine, and cornstarch, then giving it a very quick deep-fry before proceeding with the rest of the dish. It worked pretty well, but still wasn’t as soft and tender as at a Chinese place.

I’ll try your method next time.

However, I _did_ try a soda method once when doing a ground beef dish. America’s Test Kitchen said that sprinkling a solution of baking soda and water over ground beef before proceeding with frying and crumbling it would keep the beef clumps tender and moist. I did this when making shepherd’s pie and it worked very well: no dryish gnarly ground meat clumps.

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**Author:** ![sitchensis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sitchensis/32/4892_2.png) [@sitchensis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sitchensis)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2016, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-into-velveting-meat-with-baking-soda/768523/4 "2016-10-14T18:02:51Z")

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I read about the other ways to velvet meat with cornstarch and egg whites and I’ll have to try them. The funny thing is, I was attracted to the baking soda recipe because it seemed like the cheapest and least time consuming method and I figured that’s exactly what some hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant would do.

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**Author:** ![Pazu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pazu/32/15522_2.png) [@Pazu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pazu)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2016, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-into-velveting-meat-with-baking-soda/768523/5 "2016-10-14T19:34:51Z")

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I learned the cornstarch-and-soy-sauce method as a kid from watching my Taiwanese mom cook. These days I use it for pretty much any kind of meat that’s going into a stir-fry.