cheryl
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You Should Add Baking Soda to Your Ground Meat - Lifehacker
Aesthetically speaking, ground meat is not the most pleasing of animal proteins. When raw, it is all squishy and speckled, and more often than not, cooking it just transforms the pink, soft stuff into grey, nubby stuff.
This can be mitigated by leaving it alone and letting the meat develop a nice sear before breaking it up into little bits, but even that doesn’t help lessen the loss of moisture one usually sees when cooking ground beef. (If you’ve ever cooked a mass of meat for a sauce or chili, you know the pool of liquid I am referring to.)
Luckily, there is a handy little chemical that solves both of these issues. It’s called “sodium bicarbonate,” but is known to most as “baking soda,” and adding it to your ground beef helps keep it tender while also speeding up the browning process.
Aesthetically speaking, ground meat is not the most pleasing of animal proteins. When raw, it is all squishy and speckled, and more often than not, cooking it just transforms the pink, soft stuff into grey, nubby stuff.
This can be mitigated by leaving it alone and letting the meat develop a nice sear before breaking it up into little bits, but even that doesn’t help lessen the loss of moisture one usually sees when cooking ground beef. (If you’ve ever cooked a mass of meat for a sauce or chili, you know the pool of liquid I am referring to.)
Luckily, there is a handy little chemical that solves both of these issues. It’s called “sodium bicarbonate,” but is known to most as “baking soda,” and adding it to your ground beef helps keep it tender while also speeding up the browning process.