Baking Soda Is the Key to Perfectly Browned Ground Beef

As a teen, I was confused when I read a box of taco directions. I remember the step after cooking the ground beef was something like “drain off the water.” What water? It only took one time, and then I knew what water they were referring to. Cooking ground beef often results in gray, rubbery nubbins, and browning it is even harder because of that pool of liquid. Luckily, there’s an easy remedy for this problem: Cook faster, more tender ground beef with a sprinkle of baking soda.

The best way to cook ground beef

I have no issues making this claim: This is the best way to cook ground beef. Full stop. Baking soda is a household chemical most folks have readily available in the kitchen (and if you don’t it’s about $1.50 at the grocery store). This method requires the tiniest amount to be effective (more on that in a moment), and it results in not only beautifully browned, crisped edges on your ground beef, but those morsels are soft, juicy, and more flavorful than when they steam in their own liquid mess. 

I first became aware of baking soda’s cooking benefits from America’s Test Kitchen because it can speed up the cooking of tough vegetables. There’s a lot more it can do with meat—and that includes sliced or ground beef, chicken, and pork too. The way I do it is by dumping the ground meat into a large frying pan. (Crowding any ingredient, whether veggie or meat, is a surefire way to create steam and that delays browning, so give your food plenty of space.) Break up the meat with the heat off, and then sprinkle on a small amount of baking soda. America’s Test Kitchen recommends about a quarter teaspoon for every 12 ounces of meat, so for 16 ounces of beef I eyeballed a heaping quarter-teaspoon. 

Sprinkle the bicarb as widely as you can to cover the most meat surface as possible. It’s impossible to cover every spot, and that's okay, it'll still work wonders. Toss, flip, and stir the meat around to mix up the meat with the baking soda and let it sit for 15 minutes. When the timer is up, turn on the flame and cook as usual. 

What’s the difference?

I cooked two batches of meat to show the difference—one with the baking soda treatment and one without. For the baking soda batch, I sprinkled it on and waited 15 minutes. Then I turned the flame onto about medium heat and started stirring and breaking up the meat as it began to cook. Not only did the meat cook quickly, but I started seeing browning within the first two minutes; a lot of the meat was still raw in areas. 

The entire pan of meat was cooked in five minutes, and I crisped it for two extra minutes. There was only one moment where I could see some liquid emerge, but it was nothing you would equate to a pool. 

For the regular ground meat, I simply started cooking it over medium heat, breaking it apart and stirring. Things were looking the same for the first minute, minus the browning. Then just before the final parts turned gray, a great puddle of liquid formed. That liquid is supposed to be inside your meat, by the way. Instead, it fills the pan before the meat can start browning and further delays that browning. That pan took an extra five minutes and the meat pieces were noticeably tough.

Why does adding baking soda brown ground beef better?

Baking soda does double duty with meat, acting both as a tenderizer and creating an environment for better browning. In regard to tenderizing, whenever meat hits a hot pan you can see it visibly contract. Whether it’s a burger or a steak, you’ve probably witnessed what appears to be shrinkage. When meat cooks, the muscle fibers contract and squeeze out liquid as a result. The more you cook it, the more liquid squeezes out. That’s why overcooked meat tastes dry. That is exactly what you’re seeing when you see that pool of liquid in a pan of ground beef. What’s left behind is hard, overdone bits of meat in the pan.

Baking soda fixes this by preventing the fibers from squeezing out so much of their juices. That same article explains that bicarbonate of soda changes the pH on the meat, causing the muscle filaments (tiny strands that exist in muscle cells) to repel from each other even when they meet heat. So instead of tightening up, they stay apart. The liquid inside doesn’t have to abandon ship, and that results in juicier meat. 

Less liquid in the pan also means faster browning—because browning can only happen if there isn’t a ton of water or steam present. Additionally, increasing the pH with baking soda creates a more basic environment for the meat, and that is when the Maillard reaction really pops off. The Maillard reaction is what we have to thank for gorgeously browned baked goods, meats, and vegetables, and these browned areas actually create new, more complex flavors. More browning actually does mean your food is more flavorful. And while Maillard reactions can happen without baking soda, they increase with a higher pH. 

Isn’t it nice to know that the smallest, cheapest, most simple addition to your ground beef can have such a meaningful effect on your dinner? I find this very satisfying. Give it a try and I think you will too.