You Should Be Adding Baking Soda To Your Beef: Here’s Why

Ground beef seems quite simple—but all it takes is one too-dry burger or one unpleasantly-crumbly cooking experience to prove that it’s a bit trickier to perfect on your stove or grill than you might initially think. Cook it just a little too long and it can lose all of its flavor (and leave you needing a tall drink of water to wash down). And sometimes, despite your best efforts, it can also wind up tasting pretty bland.

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There’s a fix for all of these all-too-common scenarios, though, and it’s sitting inside your pantry right now. It’s baking soda―and it’s a cheap, convenient, and tiny tweak you can make that’ll have a massive impact on your next ground beef recipe.

Baking Soda Boosts Ground Beef’s Flavor

It’s time to stop reserving your baking soda as a mere baking ingredient for homemade chocolate chip cookies and tackling super-stinky fridge smells. When you mix a sprinkle of this potent powder in with your ground beef, it’ll deliver a flavor boost so good, it’ll totally change the way you cook this meat forever.

Baking soda makes such a flavorful impact on ground beef because it increases the meat’s surface pH. This makes it less acidic and more alkaline (or basic, if you prefer), a change that alters the way its proteins cook—and, in turn, helps your beef stay moist instead of drying out.

Basically, it changes the typical Maillard reaction, or series of chemical reactions that occur during cooking, that happens when ground beef heats up on the stove or grill. Without baking soda, ground beef tends to get crumbly and dry because its proteins contract, which causes moisture loss. But when baking soda is added and the pH level increases, new flavor compounds are created that alter its taste. 

And the final result is ground beef that’s more flavorful and more savory.

When to Add Baking Soda to Your Ground Beef

To level up your ground beef for homemade burgers, tacos, and other recipes, here’s what you should do. Mix 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda in one tablespoon of water (per one pound of ground beef). Make sure it dissolves completely. Then, pour the baking soda and water concoction into your ground beef. Mix again until evenly combined. Let your meat sit for 15 minutes or longer. Then, you’re ready to get cooking.

Baking soda doesn’t necessarily always improve ground beef, though. It’s particularly helpful when you’re working with leaner ground beef—think 90/10 or 93/7 options. But if all you have on hand is typical 80/20 on hand, you’ll still get a noticeable change in how moist the final product is.

And you don’t have to add in baking soda every time you break out ground beef. Save it for recipes where the meat is the focus so the flavor benefits are even bigger (and more obvious). If you’re tossing the beef into a casserole, for example, odds are you won’t taste a big difference. However, if you’re whipping up Sloppy Joes, the flavor will stand out.