Just add 1 to 2 tablespoons of white vinegar to your cooking liquids and your roasts, stew meats, and steaks will come out tender and juicy every time. Another option is to pierce your meat all over with a fork and then soak it in vinegar for 1 to 2 hours before you cook it.

Sourness comes from acidic ingredients (including tomatoes, wine and vinegar). If your dish tastes too sour try to add sweetness—think sugar, honey (it’s healthy!), cream or even caramelized onions. You can also dilute the dish (same as you would with a dish with too much salt).

Vinegar is a relatively strong cooking acid, almost as strong as citrus juice. Ultimately, a brine or marinade that contains vinegar causes meat to toughen, ruining its texture. Though vinegar can tenderize the surface of raw pork, it begins to toughen that meat after 2 hours.

What does soaking meat in vinegar do? The acetic acid in the vinegar breaks down meat fibers, making them more tender and flavorful. The acid content and tangy flavor of vinegar makes it an excellent ingredient in a marinade for meat, poultry, fish, or vegetables. Vinegar can also tenderize tough cuts of meat.

What you do: Combine one part baking powder with three parts kosher salt. Add a dash of black pepper and sprinkle the mixture evenly over the skin. Transfer the chicken to the baking sheet and let it rest uncovered in the refrigerator overnight. Then roast as you normally would.

Serious Eats suggests mixing one part baking powder with three to four parts kosher salt, adding in some black pepper, and sprinkling it over the whole chicken. Just a light dusting, though. When it comes to wings, they suggest one teaspoon each baking soda and salt per pound of chicken.

Light a grill and oil the grate. Remove the chicken thighs from the marinade and pat dry; season the skin with salt. Grill the chicken skin side down over moderately low heat until the skin is golden brown and very crisp, 18 to 20 minutes.

If you’re serving chicken, there’s no need to strip the skin. Chicken skin has had a bad rap for being high in fat. But most of the fat in chicken skin is healthy, unsaturated fat—and cooking with the skin keeps the chicken flavorful and moist, so you don’t need to add as much salt or use a breaded coating.

The heat is too high or too low. The skin won’t be crispy, and it won’t be a memorable eating experience. To make sure that your oil’s temperature remains steady at around 350 degrees F, keep an instant-read kitchen thermometer nearby so you can continually monitor the oil’s temperature.

You’re dredging the chicken in too much flour Fried chicken is best with a light coating of flour. You’re going for that light, crispy, addictive crust. No need to dip your chicken in flour more than once. Using too much flour for dredging results in wet, soggy, greasy crust.

1. The heat is too high. Chefworks.com points out there is a lot that can go wrong during the chicken frying process. If the heat is too high this is going to result in a burnt exterior and an undercooked interior.

Using these marinades accelerates the protein collagen breakdown and speeds up the tenderizing of the meat. Milk Is also a brilliant tenderizing and soaking agent as it works in two ways with chicken. The lactic acid destabilizes the protein, and the calcium accelerates the natural breakdown process.

When extreme heat comes into contact with proteins, such as chicken, the proteins contract and expels the moisture. And because water transfers heat more effectively than air, adding water to your cooking chicken will only make it hotter and more prone to drying out, not keep it more moist.

The poultry industry has a fowl problem: an emerging phenomenon called “woody breast.” While it’s not harmful to humans, the condition causes chicken breasts to be tougher because of hard or woody fibers that lace the meat.

Historically, stringy meat has generally been the result of overcooked chicken. Along with hard, chewy meat called “woody breast,” “spaghetti meat” is allegedly the result of breeding to make big-breasted chickens grow faster.

Fresh raw chicken is usually a light pink color with white pieces of fat, has little to no odor, and is soft and moist. If your chicken is slimy, has a foul smell, or has changed to a yellow, green, or gray color, these are signs that your chicken has gone bad.