Velveting beef (2024)

FAQs

How do you velvetize beef? ›

While there are several ways to velvet, a pound of meat needs about two teaspoons of cornstarch and two teaspoons of oil, says Leung. You may also include two to three tablespoons of water. For beef, add a 1/4-teaspoon of baking soda for tenderizing. Additional seasonings are optional and vary from recipe to recipe.

Once you have your slurry mixture, mix in the meat. Let the meat marinate in the mixture, refrigerated, for at least 30 minutes and up to 12 hours. Rinse off the cornstarch from the meat with cold water (hot water can cook the meat). Pat the meat dry with a paper towel and it's now ready for cooking.

Velveting time

Now here's the secret ingredients: ½ teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and 2 teaspoons of cornflour (cornstarch). Give everything a good mix and leave to velvet. (Is 'velvet' a verb? It is now!)

Less than a teaspoon of baking soda ensures that your steak remains juicy and tender—even after a speedy marinade. While other recipes demand hours of marinating, this baking soda hack makes a flank steak or any other fibrous cut of beef ready to sear after just an hour.

Velveting chicken is a perfectly healthy meat preparation method since the core ingredients are cornstarch and oil, each of which is perfectly fine for you to eat. So, velveting can deliver delicious, tender meat without sacrificing quality when it comes to taste or health.

You can still use baking powder for velveting beef but I recommend using three times as much (4 1/2 tsp) per 500g (1 1/4 lbs.) beef. Whatever you use, it is essential that you get it all off the meat before cooking.

You can velvet meat and make it melt-in-your-mouth tender by quickly tossing chunks of beef or chicken in about ¾ tsp of baking soda for about 15 minutes before your next stir fry, then rinse and pat the meat dry before putting in the pan.

Don't let it sit too long: Velvet the meat for at least five minutes or up to an hour. The longer it sits, the more tender it will be. However, if you velvet for longer than an hour, the meat will become too soft—more akin to goo than a tender cut of protein.

Transfer the meat to a zip-top bag, stainless steel or glass bowl, or other non-reactive container, and refrigerate for 3 hours or up to overnight. Remove the meat from the container and briefly rinse the meat in plain water to strip off the baking soda solution (or as much of it as possible). Cook as desired.

It all starts with tenderizing the meat with baking soda and water that is massaged into the thinly sliced meat. It is then left to marinate for about an hour or two before cooking.

What is the best homemade meat tenderizer? ›

Once the beef arrives at Texas Roadhouse, meat cutters guide it through an in-house aging process. Although there are plenty of techniques for perfecting tender steak, aging the cuts in a controlled and salty environment helps break down tough muscle fibers, resulting in a richer, more succulent, final product.

Whether hosting a holiday cookout, serving up some stir-fry or tackling game meats, baking soda is the go-to meat tenderizer to help make your steak, chicken or turkey silkier, juicier and yummier.

Add Some Fruit. In addition to acid-based foods, plant enzymes in fruits like pineapple and kiwi can tenderize meat. Like with lemon juice or vinegar, you don't want to leave these foods on beef for too long—it will make the meat soft. You can blend fruit to create a marinade.

Tenderizing The Steaks

The first method, and arguably the fastest, is using a fork. Just go over the entire steak, puncturing holes all over. Then flip and repeat. The idea is that opening lots of holes helps moisture escape during cooking.

Alternatively, if you don't want to use corn starch for velveting beef, you can also use tapioca starch or potato starch but any type of starch will actually do the trick. For the neutral oil, I like to use avocado oil but any type of oil will work as well.