Have you all heard of "velveting" meat? Its the thing that Chinese restaurants do to make that Mongolian beef nice and tender and kind of have that nice smooth mouth-feel.

It is just coating fairly thin pieces of meat in baking soda (it looks like velvet) for a fairly short time and then rinsing the baking soda off. It seems to be highly time-sensitive to the type of meat you are using.

I did some A/B testing. It looks like it is very dependent on the thickness of the meat and the toughness of the meat.

I made two chicken cordon bleu side-by-side. Both chicken breasts were butterflied and then squished into a thin layer using the head of a spiked meat mallot. Then I "velveted" one for 20 minutes. Everything else was the same and then I ate from each side-by-sde. It was subtle but it was very real. The re-heated stuff the next day was even more obvious when compared side-by-side.

I then did a Thai panang chicken curry dish with chicken tenderloins (already a very tender chicken cut) sliced pretty thin (like a big but normal fork's tong spacing). and "velveted" for 35 minutes. That pushed the tenderness of the chicken a little too far for my liking. It was still good but I want more bite in the meat when I make that dish again.

Happy exploring this strange world that has 10000 paths called cooking.