Oxford University Press, for Food Quality and Safety

Authority

Academic

Territories

US, GB, AU, NZ, CA

Primacy

secondary

Commercial interest

none

Retrieved

2026-08-22

State

Read and citable

Original document

PEER-REVIEWED, OPEN ACCESS, AND IT REPORTS A DISAGREEMENT RATHER THAN A RULE — which is why it is worth holding. Rahman, Islam, Pan, Kong, Xi, Du, Yang, Wang, Oh and Han state that `Marination in an acidic environment lowers the pH of meat, leading to an improvement in meat tenderness', and then immediately record that 'Gómez-Salazar et al. (2018) observed the opposite result of acid marination with 1.5%% citric acid, where meat hardness increased`. A catalogue that published only the first sentence would be repeating the folk claim this review complicates. NOTE WHAT IT DOES NOT SAY: it gives no penetration depth. The widely repeated figure of one to three millimetres appears in test-kitchen and hobbyist writing and in none of the institutional sources retrieved, so BBQHQ does not print it.

Technical, Culinary practice

• Explicitly not safety: A review reporting that marination lowers pH and reduces bacterial survival is describing a mechanism, not issuing consumer guidance. No endpoint, no instruction and no reliance on marinade as a control measure may be taken from it — the Illinois Extension page is explicit that marinades must not be relied on to kill bacteria, and this source does not contradict that.
• Explicitly not culture: A food-science review makes no claim about whose tradition anything belongs to.

• “salt draws the liquid out of the meat through osmosis. Then, the marinade solution is absorbed by the meat while the muscle structure is broken down.”

  A peer-reviewed review describes marination as salt drawing liquid out of the meat by osmosis, after which the marinade solution is absorbed and the muscle structure is broken down.

  No penetration depth is stated anywhere in this review, and that absence is the reason this is recorded as an open question. The one-to-three-millimetre figure repeated widely online appears in test-kitchen and hobbyist writing and in none of the institutional sources retrieved for this question.

• “Marination in an acidic environment lowers the pH of meat, leading to an improvement in meat tenderness. [...] Gómez-Salazar et al. (2018) observed the opposite result of acid marination with 1.5% citric acid, where meat hardness increased.”

  The same peer-reviewed review reports both that acid marination improves tenderness and that a cited study found the opposite, with citric acid increasing hardness.

  The two sentences are separated in the source by intervening text, marked here with an ellipsis in brackets. They are recorded together because reporting either alone would misrepresent the review, which raises the second finding specifically as a counter to the first.

  What it covers:

  The contrary finding is at a stated concentration — 1.5% citric acid — and is one study. This is a disagreement in the literature and is published as one rather than resolved.

• “Oils also assist in transferring different types of fat-soluble flavors from a variety of seasonings, such as chilies, herbs, and some spices.”

  The review describes oil's role in a marinade as transferring fat-soluble flavours from seasonings such as chillies, herbs and spices.

• Whether an acidic marinade tenderises meat is contested in the peer-reviewed literature. A 2023 review states that acid marination lowers the pH of meat and improves tenderness, and in the same passage reports a study in which 1.5% citric acid increased hardness instead.
• Oil in a marinade carries fat-soluble flavour compounds from seasonings such as chillies, herbs and spices.

If this source changes, these are the claims that need rechecking. That is the point of recording provenance per claim rather than per page.