The Basic Marinade Ingredient That Ensures The Juiciest Chicken Breast Every Time

Is there anything you can't do with baking soda? Between brewing coffee with baking soda, using it to make peeling hard-boiled eggs easier, and mixing baking soda and water together to clean your oven, it seems like the powdery stuff can help out with everything from cooking to cleaning. As if that weren't enough, our old friend sodium bicarbonate is also a game changer when it comes to tenderizing meat, specifically chicken. 

As a marinade ingredient, baking soda is the secret to ensuring you serve the juiciest chicken breast you've ever eaten. In fact, many Chinese restaurants regularly use baking soda to do what they call velveting, which is tossing chicken with pure baking soda to tenderize tougher, more fibrous, inexpensive cuts of meat, such as chicken breast or flank steak.

As you probably know, chicken, like any other meat, contains a lot of protein. On a pH scale, it's on the low end, as meats are acidic. Meanwhile, baking soda has a high pH, meaning it's an alkaline substance, or antacid, which neutralizes acids. So when we're talking about pairing it with poultry, baking soda raises the pH level on the surface of chicken, making it harder for the proteins in the chicken to bond together. If they don't, the meat softens — in other words, baking soda tenderizes the meat. It does this in a matter of minutes, so it doesn't take long. Afterward you can marinate the meat normally to add flavor. Just remember not to use baking soda that's been sitting open in the refrigerator to absorb odors; it might affect the flavor of the chicken.

To velvet chicken, you can simply sprinkle the baking soda directly onto your chicken, toss it, let it sit for 15 minutes, then rinse the baking soda off and begin cooking. If you don't rinse it off, it will keep breaking down the proteins until the chicken actually becomes too soft, which you don't want. 

If you want to both infuse your poultry with flavor and tenderize it all at once, try making a marinade containing baking soda as an ingredient, as is demonstrated in this TikTok posted by user @ketorecipes. Simply add about half a teaspoon of baking soda to your marinade, let the chicken sit in it for no more than 30 minutes at room temperature, then start cooking. With chicken this juicy, you'll never skip the baking soda again!