How Much Bicarb Soda to Tenderise Meat? A Chef's Chart by Weight

You've already googled this once, haven't you.

And you got five different answers. One teaspoon per kilo. One teaspoon per 500g. Three-quarters of a teaspoon per 250g. Two teaspoons per pound. Somewhere in that pile is the reason your last attempt came out either exactly as chewy as before, or faintly soapy. 😅

So let's fix it properly.

There are two correct doses, not one. If you're rinsing the bicarb off before it hits the pan, use 1% of the meat's weight — one level teaspoon per 500g. If you're leaving it on (proper velveting, where the coating goes into the wok with the meat), use 0.3% — about a third of a teaspoon per 500g.

Same ingredient. Same twenty minutes. Three times the difference in dose.

Every conflicting number you found online is one of those two answers, written by someone who never bothered to say which method they were describing.

Why every website gives you a different number

Bicarb soda does one thing to meat: it raises the pH at the surface. Alkaline protein can't bond as tightly to itself while it cooks, so the muscle fibres stay loose and hold onto their water instead of squeezing it out. That's the whole trick. Softer bite, juicier slice.

Which means the dose depends entirely on one question: does the bicarb stay on the meat, or does it get washed away?

• Rinse-off — you're using bicarb as a treatment. Whack a decent amount on, give it twenty minutes, rinse it thoroughly, pat dry. The surface pH has already done its job. Any excess goes down the sink, so you can afford to be generous.
• Leave-on — you're using bicarb as part of a marinade or velveting coat. It goes into the pan. Nothing gets washed away. Which means every grain you added is a grain you're going to taste.

Nearly every recipe on page one of Google quotes a rinse-off dose while describing a leave-on method. That's the soapy aftertaste, right there. It's not that you did it wrong. You did exactly what you were told.

The chart: how much bicarb soda per weight of meat

Grams first, spoons second — a scale is more honest than a teaspoon, and these numbers are small enough that it matters.

(Conversion used throughout: 1 level teaspoon of bicarb ≈ 4.6 g.)

Chart 1 — Leave-on (velveting, no rinse) · 0.3% of meat weight

For thin-sliced beef, chicken, pork or lamb going into a stir-fry. This is the one you want for wok cooking.

Chart 2 — Rinse-off (soak or dry sprinkle, then wash) · 1% of meat weight

For tougher, sinewy cuts you're about to cook hard and fast — chuck, blade, round, skirt.

Chart 3 — Mince · 0.25% of meat weight

Mince is always leave-on, because you can't rinse mince. Go lighter again.

Use the bicarb from the baking aisle — plain sodium bicarbonate, food grade. Not the giant bag from the cleaning aisle, and not baking powder, which is mostly filler and acid and will do nothing useful here.

⚠️ The Australian tablespoon trap

This one catches people constantly, and almost every article you'll read on this topic is American, so nobody warns you.

An Australian tablespoon is 20 ml. Everyone else's is 15 ml.

Ours is four teaspoons. Theirs is three. So when you follow a US recipe that says "1 tablespoon of bicarb" and you reach for your Aussie tablespoon, you've just used 33% more than the recipe intended.

At these doses, a third more bicarb is the difference between silky and soapy. If a recipe is written in tablespoons and you can't tell where it's from, convert to teaspoons and work from the charts above.

How to actually do it

Leave-on velveting (Chart 1):

1. Slice the meat thin — 3–5 mm, across the grain. Thin matters more than people think; bicarb only ever works on the surface, and thin slices are almost all surface.
2. Weigh the meat. Actually weigh it. This is a percentage game.
3. Sprinkle over the bicarb from Chart 1, plus 1 tbsp of water per 250 g to help it distribute.
4. Massage it through for 30 seconds until there's no dry powder left anywhere.
5. Rest 20–30 minutes in the fridge.
6. Add 1–2 tsp cornflour per 250 g and toss again. (Bicarb makes it tender. Cornflour makes it silky — two different jobs, and you want both. There's a full breakdown in baking soda vs cornflour for velveting.)
7. Straight into a screaming hot pan. Don't crowd it.

Rinse-off (Chart 2):

1. Toss the meat with the Chart 2 dose, dry or dissolved in a splash of water.
2. Fridge, 15–20 minutes.
3. Rinse under cold running water — properly, longer than feels necessary. Any bicarb left behind is a taste you'll notice.
4. Pat it completely dry. Wet meat steams instead of searing, and you've just undone your own work.
5. Marinate and cook as normal.

Three things bicarb won't do (and one thing that ruins it)

It won't get better if you leave it longer. The pH shift happens fast — most of it inside fifteen minutes. Leaving meat in bicarb for three hours doesn't make it three hours more tender; it just gives the surface time to go slimy and pale. Twenty to thirty minutes is the sweet spot, and overnight is a genuine mistake.

It won't fix a braising cut. This is the big one. Bicarb does not break down connective tissue — it has no effect on collagen at all. So it can't turn a piece of brisket or shin into something you can eat off a quick sear. Those cuts need time, moisture and low heat. Bicarb is for thin slices cooked fast. Use it anywhere else and you'll be disappointed for reasons that have nothing to do with your dosing.

It won't improve a good steak. Eye fillet, scotch, a well-marbled porterhouse — leave them alone. There's no toughness to fix, so all bicarb can do is soften the outside into something faintly mushy. It's a tool for cheap cuts and thin slices, and that's a feature, not a limitation.

And the thing that ruins it: more. Doubling the dose doesn't double the tenderness — the effect plateaus quickly. What keeps climbing is the alkaline taste: soapy, metallic, a slight slipperiness on the tongue that no sauce will hide. If you're going to miss the number, miss it low. (If you've already been burnt by this, velveting chicken without the baking soda taste walks through the fix.)

👨‍🍳 Chef's note

Here's something that took me years to notice.

In my dad's kitchens — Danny ran Chinese restaurants for decades, first in Texas, then here as Emperors of China — nobody ever measured bicarb per portion. Not once. The velveting mix was made up in a tub at the start of service, five or ten kilos of sliced meat at a time, and it was consistent because it was big. At that scale you're weighing in grams on a proper scale, and being a gram out across 5 kg is nothing.

Then you come home and try to do 300 g of beef for two people. Now the dose is a fraction of a teaspoon, your measuring spoon is a rounded guess, and being "a bit out" is being 60% out.

That's the real reason home velveting fails, and it's got nothing to do with skill. The restaurant technique doesn't scale down cleanly. Which is why my honest advice for home cooks is: velvet 500 g at a time even if you're only cooking for two, and cook the rest tomorrow. The bigger batch is genuinely easier to get right.

When you'd rather not measure a third of a teaspoon

Look — you can absolutely do this with a box of bicarb and a set of measuring spoons. The charts above are all you need, and I'd rather you cooked than shopped.

But there's a reason we bottled it.

YumYum Meat Velvet is the velveting step pre-balanced — the tenderising, the coating and the seasoning already in proportion, so your dose is 1–2 tbsp plus 1–2 tbsp of water per 250 g of meat, rested 30 minutes. A tablespoon you can actually measure, instead of eyeballing a third of a teaspoon and hoping. Same twenty-minute technique, none of the arithmetic, and it seasons the meat while it works — because tender and bland is only half a fix.

It's the one shortcut on the wok line I'd hand a beginner without hesitating. 🔪

Cooking for a family, or velveting more than once a week? The Three-Pack of Meat Velvet is $50 and ships free (free AU shipping over $50), which works out cheaper per can than buying them one at a time. ✨

More technique in the full guide: How to Velvet Meat at Home — chicken, beef, pork and lamb. And if the problem you're actually chasing is rubbery stir-fry chicken, start with why your chicken goes tough in the wok — bicarb is only one of the five reasons.

FAQ

How much bicarb soda per kg of meat?
Depends on whether you rinse it off. Leaving it on (velveting): 3 g, about ⅔ of a teaspoon per kilo. Rinsing it off first: 10 g, about 2 teaspoons per kilo.

Do I have to rinse bicarb soda off meat?
Only if you dosed for rinsing. At the rinse-off rate (1% of meat weight) you must rinse thoroughly or it will taste soapy. At the velveting rate (0.3%) you don't rinse — the dose is deliberately low enough to cook with.

How long should meat sit in bicarb soda?
Fifteen to thirty minutes. The reaction is mostly finished inside fifteen, and past thirty you're only risking a soft, pale surface. Don't leave it overnight.

Can you use bicarb soda on chicken?
Yes, and it's excellent on breast and thigh sliced thin for stir-fry. Same 0.3% leave-on dose, 20 minutes, then cornflour before it hits the pan.

Why does my meat taste soapy after using bicarb soda?
You used a rinse-off dose in a leave-on method — the single most common mistake, and usually the recipe's fault, not yours. Drop to 0.3% of the meat's weight, or rinse properly if you're staying at 1%.

What's the difference between bicarb soda and baking powder for tenderising?
Bicarb soda is pure sodium bicarbonate and it's what does the work. Baking powder is bicarb cut with acid and starch, so it's both weaker and unpredictable here. Use bicarb.

Does bicarb soda work on steak or slow-cooking cuts?
No. It has no effect on connective tissue, so it can't rescue brisket, shin or chuck for a quick sear, and a good marbled steak doesn't need it. It's for thin slices cooked fast.

Written by Vincent Lim — chef, cookbook author, and co-founder of YumYum. Vincent grew up in his family's Chinese restaurants and learned to cook from his father, Danny. He shares the restaurant techniques most home cooks are never told.

Researched and drafted with AI assistance, edited and kitchen-checked by the YumYum team.