3 hours ago, btbyrd said:
Sure. Genuine Ideas did a blog post on this called "Vacuum Marination Sucks" that provides a good overview. If you want to go down the meat science journal rabbithole, researchers at the University of Georgia and the USDA have repeatedly (1) found (2) that vacuum levels have no effect on the uptake of marinade by chicken. They conclude that "vacuum pressure during tumbling, as is widely practiced commercially, may not be necessary. The underlying principles for using vacuum pressure may be erroneous and should be examined further." Another study on the effect of vacuum marination on fish found that ""contrary to conventional industry belief, vacuum (9.2 kPa) during tumbling did not affect uptake of marinade." These articles suggest that the perceived benefits of marinating in a vacuum tumbler actually come from the tumbling, not the vacuum.
I have yet to put a vaccum selaed bag of marinating meat in my dryer, but I can't say that I haven't considered it.
I've read these linked sources. None addresses beef. The first is almost completely devoid of data, and the illustrations appear completely fictional, apparently designed to support the conclusion.
The second, about chicken, actually acknowledges that vacuum *does* increase uptake in beef: "The vacuum tumbling process has been shown to increase marinade uptake in the meat (Young and Lyon, 1997; Young and Smith, 2004) and improve cook yield (Young and Lyon, 1997; Young et al., 2004)." Here, the time period was only 1 hour.
The third linked study, also about chicken, had a marination time period of only 30 minutes.
The fourth addressed halibut. Unfortunately, all I could access was the abstract, which indicates that testing vacuum uptake wasn't the focus of the article.
My curiosity has inspired me to cut 3 identical tritips (7 1/4oz) each. One sits just in a shallow tray at ambient pressure, the second is under vacuum in a Vac-u-Vin cannister (shaken a few times to make sure marinade coats the cut) and the third one Jaccarded and in the same vacuum environment. Equal volume of marinade in each.
Any bets on weight differences after 6 hours? I'm not adding green dye to prime beef sorry. You'll have to trust/excuse me reporting any taste differences.