The Marinade Ingredient That Can Give Your Steak A Mushy Texture

While there are countless ways to cook a great steak, from pan-searing to char-grilling, the secret to making your steak stand out often lies in the marinade. It doesn't just tenderize your steak and give it a nicer chew — all the spices and aromatics will infuse into the meat, granting it extra flavors to keep your guests' tastebuds excited. However, there's one marinade ingredient that you need to keep an eye out for: Fresh ginger.

We spoke with Michael Taus, Chef at La Grande Boucherie, about this surprising pitfall. "The enzymes in ginger can over-tenderize the meat," he explains, "leading to a mushy texture if left too long." All culinary gingers have an enzyme called zingibain that can "digest" the fibers in the meat and softens it out, similar to how bromelain in pineapples makes it a potent meat tenderizer. While there's legit culinary uses for raw ginger, like in Korean bulgogi where fresh ginger is used both for its flavor and tenderizing effect, it can spell disaster for your prime steak. Leave your steak soaking in raw ginger juice for too long could lead to something closer to meat pudding instead of a juicy, tender cut.

The good news is that if you're a fan of ginger's spice, you don't have to swear off of it entirely. With a bit of prep-work, a ginger-flavored marinade is still on the table.

We emphasized the word "raw" ginger because this problem is specific to fresh ginger. After it's been cooked or treated, the enzyme is deactivated and no longer poses a problem — exactly what we need to do for our upcoming ginger-forward steak marinade. The simplest approach is to cook the ginger first. When the root is heated to 158 degrees Fahrenheit, the zingibain is neutralized. So all you have to do is grate your ginger (with a proper grater, not a fork) and pop it in the microwave for about a minute, or give it a quick sauté in a hot pan. And there you have it — marinade-safe ginger with all of its signature spice to flavor your steak!

An alternate method is treating the raw ginger with something acidic to denature the enzyme. Grate the ginger in a bowl and stir it together with a splash of vinegar or a squeeze of citrus juice. Just beware that this will add a tangy twist to your marinade.

Treating your ginger, whether through cooking or acidifying, may slightly mellow its intensity. But we're confident you'll find the trade-off to be worth it when you tuck into a perfectly textured, flavorful steak that'd have otherwise turned into mush.