Shelf · Salt, smoke & time · No heat
Marinating
Steeping food in a seasoned liquid — usually acid, oil and aromatics — for a stretch before cooking.
Why it works
It is a surface treatment, whatever the recipe implies. Flavour molecules from herbs and spices are far too large to travel more than a few millimetres into muscle; only salt and, slowly, sugar get deep. What a marinade genuinely changes is the outside — and that is where all the browning happens.
The tell
The surface takes on colour and smell, and the outer few millimetres of a cut piece look visibly different from the centre.
- No rim
- A few millimetres
- Chalky and soft
How it fails
Long soaks in a strongly acidic marinade turn the surface chalky and mushy rather than tender — with lemon or vinegar, count in hours, not days. And oily marinades flare violently on a grill; wipe the piece down before it goes over the fire.
In the app, the card opens on the recipe step that names it, with the tell drawn.
Learning is free on every plan.