Marinate Budget-Friendly Beef With One Ingredient For Tender Steak

While pricey cuts of beef vary in marbling, flavor, and size, they all have one thing in common: tenderness. However, just because you're looking for a more budget-friendly option doesn't mean you have to work your jaw to the bone chewing your food. If you marinate them with a bit of dried mango, you can see incredible results in both texture and taste without much work.

Mangos are mildly acidic, with a pH of around 5.5 to 6.5 compared to a lemon's 2 or 3. But like the best acidic fruits to tenderize meat, they also contain enzymes called proteases that help break down and loosen muscle fibers. You'll want to be careful not to overmarinate your protein to avoid a mushy texture, but cool temperatures can help slow the enzymes down, transforming even the toughest cheap steak alternatives into high-end cuts.

While fresh mangos would be perfectly fine for this trick, dried ones have a few advantages. The biggest is that they don't add extra moisture, which lets you carefully calibrate how much of other wet ingredients you want to include. They can stay good for anywhere between six months and a year and, since dehydrating concentrates their flavors, you only have to use a few at a time for great taste. The same way that dried fruit gives pot roast a brighter flavor, you'll notice that your dishes tenderized with dried mango have an almost tropical aroma to them.

A good marinade evenly distributes all its ingredients, infusing every last inch of the meat with great flavor. So, if you leave your dried mango whole to soak in the other ingredients, it might not end up doing its best work. Fortunately, prepping dehydrated strips is pretty straightforward, and pairing them with complementary ingredients for different sizes of meat can greatly increase their tenderness.

To ensure your dried mangos mix in evenly, you'll want to rehydrate them and then blend them first. Whether you soak them in water or simmer them with your other ingredients, this helps avoid large chunks of fruit floating with your meat and ensures their flavors are readily available for the proteins to absorb. For savory recipes, it's best to use ones with no added sugars, but soaking the strips first can also help strip them of any extra sweetness you may not want on your meat. Still, if you plan on adding more acid, that same sugar could help balance the flavors.

There's no hard and fast rule about how long you should marinate steaks, but tenderizing ingredients like mango generally speed up the process. If you're working with thin meats, you may want to avoid additional tenderizers like baking soda, acid, or soy sauce, as the three together can quickly render them mushy. However, if you're working with something more sizable, this combination can produce a delicious result that severely cuts down on the marinating time.