Ginger Beer Is Your Key For Flavorful, Tender Chicken

"Let it marinate" is not only advice to allow time to consider a novel idea, it's also one of the best ways to add flavor to an otherwise uninspired meal. Marinating otherwise bland proteins like chicken in a simple solution of seasoning, fat, and acid before cooking is an excellent method of both tenderizing the meat and adding depth of flavor. While lots of bubbly brews make for great marinades, next time you're preparing chicken for a soak, consider adding ginger beer.

Often used as an all-too versatile mixer for cocktails like a dark 'n' stormy or a smoky Irish wolfhound, ginger beer is ginger ale's sexier, spicier cousin made with real ginger fermented with brown sugar and yeast. Its intensely spicy-sweet flavor, carbonation, and fermentation is what makes ginger beer so well suited to marinating chicken. In addition, when a ginger beer marinade is combined with compatible ingredients and reduced, it does double duty as a perfect flavor-boosting sauce or glaze.

There are several reasons why ginger beer makes for a great marinade. First, the fermentation process boosts the spicy ginger flavor while also adding acidity, a necessary component to marinades which aids in tenderizing the chicken by denaturing the proteins. Additionally, the sugar in ginger beer will help caramelization or browning chicken when it comes time to cook. Even more interesting, ginger has a natural enzyme called zingibain, or ginger protease, which will tenderize proteins by breaking down collagen connective tissues and making them easier to digest.

As we've already discussed, ginger has a unique spiciness that lends flavor and heat for multitudes of cooking and baking applications, and that's the real crux of this conversation — will ginger beer taste good? Though it's likely you've already enjoyed it without knowing, try adding ginger beer — and maybe grated ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil and green onions — to your chicken marinade and experience a flavor explosion. But don't let it sit for too long! Over-marinating can be as bad or worse than no marinade at all.