Imagine this: you’re slaving in the kitchen over a recipe that you think will go incredibly well—either something a friend recommended, or a bit of inspiration that the good-idea fairy blessed you with. Everything should be perfect… so you’re not sure what’s going wrong. The meal is missing something. Do you need an expensive spice mix? Nope, that just added a bunch of unneeded flavors. Perhaps more salt? Shoot, now it’s too salty!

If you’ve ever been in a position like this, but you can’t quite put your finger on why, chances are it’s missing some sort of acid. According to the award-winning chef and author Samin Nosrat, acid is one of the four pillars of good cooking. But in my opinion, it’s the sneakiest concept until you learn to pay attention to it.

Acid is the secret ingredient for boosting flavor to bring a meal to life, and it also plays a fundamental role in unlocking the full textural potential of your food. Let’s talk about why acid is so awesome and some ways to use it in your kitchen.

What Acid Does to Flavor and Texture

Acid adds necessary contrast. Most dishes are protein-heavy, fat-heavy, or starch-heavy. No matter what the “heavy” is, acid makes it lighter. It makes things seem more fresh and helps you keep eating. A common term is adding acid to “cut” the fat of a meal. This is why barbeque sauce pairs so well with pulled pork, cranberry sauce with Thanksgiving dinner, or mustard and sauerkraut with your rookwurst.

Acid also compliments and enhances the other flavors within a dish, making the whole plate come to life. Ranch dressing isn’t made with cream, it’s made with buttermilk. It’s certainly a fat-forward dressing, but the only reason it works is because the acid of the buttermilk brings it to life.

Acid tenderizes meat. When you cook meat together with acid, it causes a molecular process called “denaturing.” Meat proteins are made of tightly-bound structures, and the denaturing process causes them to unravel and unfold, thus making the meat more tender on a molecular level. Another effect of acid is when you marinate your meat. Acid activates enzymes present in the meat, which break down the protein into smaller structures.

Granted, it takes more than just a fancy marinade to get fork-tender chicken breast, but I certainly love to marinate my meats in pickle juice, lime juice, and buttermilk. One warning: there is such a thing as over-marinating your meat. A good rule of thumb is to aim for the two-hour mark. Throw your marinade together, pour it over your meat in an airtight bag, and seal it in the fridge for a couple of hours while you get everything else ready. However, shrimp and small cuts of fish are ready to go in as little as fifteen minutes, and whole birds like chicken and turkey can go for up to 24 hours.

Acid crisps some vegetables. Acid also affects the molecular structure of fruits and vegetables by preventing oxidation after cutting and by breaking down pectin. Acid actually makes some vegetables more crispy, which adds some incredible crunch to your meal.

Of course, if you completely pickle your vegetables, you’ll eventually get the opposite effect where vegetables start to go limp. However, a 30-minute pickled cucumber is delightfully snappy and juicy.

Acid preserves color. Acid is a catalyst for preserving (and even intensifying) some colors, while it diminishes other colors. In general, white, green, and lightly colored vegetables tend to become translucent or fade into a ruddy color. Everyone is accustomed to this if they grew up with cucumber pickles. However, red, purple, and bright pink and orange colors benefit from acid and really pop. This makes your dishes visually striking and adds a pretty big wow factor on top of the awesome flavor.

How to Cook with Acid

Okay, now we know why acid is so awesome, but how do we strategize to incorporate it into our food?

I like to think of my meal like an orchestra. Some dishes, like my twelve-hour smoked pork or three-ingredient fettuccine alfredo, are like the tenor and soprano singers. They carry a lot of weight and make up a huge portion of the orchestra, but if you leave them on their own, the music feels two-dimensional and gets old quickly. We need to add in the tenor and bass somehow, which at times will float in the background and balance out the orchestra, and at other times will take the front seat and act as the star performer.

There are two major ways to think about this, and these methods combine to create an overall meal-planning strategy.

Acid as a complementary component. Layer acid in bits and pieces to add brightness and contrast to your meal. Sprinkle lemon over the entree, add vinegar to the salad, include cherry tomatoes in the side dish. In the case of the picture above, drizzle your fermented hot sauce over some pulled pork and fried potatoes.

Acid-forward dishes to balance fat-forward dishes. Let’s say you’re planning a three- or five-course meal. At least one of those courses should be mostly acidic. It’s that simple. Here are some examples:

• Pulled pork, Texas toast, and vinegar-heavy coleslaw
• A bread basket with cheese and compound butter, caesar salad, carbonated lemon intermezzo, lasagna, and tiramisu
• Grilled cheese and tomato soup

I hope this motivates you to try thinking about acidic components the next time you plan a meal. Leave a comment and let me know your next meal plan!

If you’re interested in learning more about acid or trying out some fun ideas, check out this article about making artisan pickles at home.

Let’s Try an Acid-Forward Recipe!

Whenever I make barbeque, I prioritize the acidic components. Usually this is in the form of a homemade barbeque sauce, but in this case I’m going to share my super-acidic coleslaw. I plan to include this dish in my food truck someday.



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