Why Sparkling Water Is The Extra Ingredient Your Steak Needs

While it might feel like an odd choice at first, using soda in your cooking can often garner tremendous results. 7-Up and Sprite are surprisingly common secret ingredients in Korean dishes, as lemon-lime sodas contribute both sweetness and tenderizing properties to dishes like bulgogi and kimchi. However it isn't just soda that can do these incredible things for your food, sparkling water can also work magic when used as a marinade for your steaks and chops.

Marinating meat is often a vital step in the cooking process, especially when grilling certain cuts of steak. While some of us enjoy the additional flavors and sweetness that a Coca-Cola-based marinade provides, other meat lovers are turned off by the potentially overpowering flavor that most sodas inflict on the meat while it marinates. For those people, using sparkling water can provide all the benefits of marinating meat in soda without the added sweetness.

A sparkling water marinade is truly among the best options for minimalist steak lovers who don't want any exterior flavors interfering with their meat. The reason for this is that the carbonation present in the sparkling water turns it mildly acidic, which makes it a great tenderizer for tougher (and less expensive) cuts.

Plus, marinades that feature sparkling water are also known to enhance seasonings like salt and pepper when you add them to your steak, as they are able to integrate into the meat more efficiently and deliver their taste more emphatically thanks to the acidity of the liquid.

When it comes to sparkling water and steak, the possibilities are vast and certainly not limited to the minimalists mentioned previously. In fact, using sparkling water alongside other favorite steak marinade ingredients may improve even complicated recipes by making the steak more tender.