Fast marinating, infusing and pickling

Save 2/3 of your precious time

In the kitchen, it’s all about cooking delicious meals quickly. Whether you enjoy cooking for your family or hosting a party, it’s always nice to learn new tricks that make your dishes even more flavorful. One of those tricks is using a vacuum. This allows you to marinate, infuse, and pickle meat, vegetables, and even herbs much faster and more effectively. In this blog, we’ll explain how it works and why it’s a must-have for every kitchen.

What is vacuum?

Before we tell you how to work faster, it's good to understand what vacuuming is and how Airtender applies it. Vacuuming involves removing air from an enclosed space, leaving practically no air, and therefore no oxygen. Normally, storage containers are airtight, which allows food to stay fresh a little longer, but not for an extended period like with vacuuming. By using this technique for marinating, infusing, and pickling, you can apply vacuuming to help liquids penetrate ingredients faster.

Anyone who marinates often knows that it’s a time-consuming process to get it just right. Quick marinating isn’t usually an option, until vacuuming is introduced. So, craving satay with pickled cucumber or another tangy side, but started too late because it needs to sit for 4 to 6 hours? When you marinate your food under vacuum, the low pressure opens up the pores of the meat and vegetables. This allows the marinade to penetrate much faster and deeper, and your dish can be on the grill or served with prawn crackers in just an hour.

Benefits of Marinating Under Vacuum:

• Faster preparation: The rule of thumb is that vacuuming saves you two-thirds (2/3) of the time.
• More flavour: The marinade penetrates deeper into the food, making it even tastier.
• Good Texture: Your food remains firm and doesn’t get too soft.

Tip: In addition to the delicious taste and aroma of marinated meat, you want your meat to be super tender. If the recipe doesn’t include acidic ingredients, add lemon/lime juice, vinegar, or even yogurt to taste. The acids help the marinade break down the texture of the meat, essentially cooking it slowly. This technique is also used to cook fish (ceviche). Here too, you can use vacuuming to significantly speed up the process.

Infusing means letting flavours from herbs or spices seep into liquids like oil or vinegar. In our Airtender Academy, where we offer cocktail workshops, we infuse our own Vodka, Gin, and Spiced Rum according to the season. It won’t surprise you that this process is also much faster when using a vacuum.

1. How Does It Work? By removing the air from the container where the infusion takes place, the flavors penetrate the liquid faster. You can actually see the air bubbles escaping from the herbs and the color seeping into the liquid.
2. Benefits:

• Faster: within 5-10 minutes, your oil or vinegar is already deliciously flavoured.
• Intense flavours: strong flavours without a long wait.
• Save and prevent waste: You need fewer herbs because the flavours are absorbed quickly and well.

Pickling is a way to preserve food longer by storing it in jars with a sour or sweet mixture. Reaching the right taste in this process can also be faster and easier with vacuum.

1. How does it work? By using a vacuum when pickling, all the air is removed from the jar. This prevents bacteria and molds from growing, keeping your food fresh longer.
2. Benefits:
   • Long Shelf Life: Your pickled food stays fresh much longer.
   • Healthy: More vitamins are retained because you need less heat.
   • Fresh Taste: Your pickled vegetables and fruits taste fresh, not stale.

What solutions does Airtender offer?

At Airtender, everything revolves around applying air and vacuum to create more flavour, preserve food longer, and prevent waste. The Lid Punch was developed to reuse glass jars or, for example, pasta bottles. You simply make a hole in the metal lid. With a Nanostopper and the vacuum pump (or Airtender Electric), you vacuum the contents, and you’re done.

If you prefer working with canning jars, Airtender has the solution for you. The vacuum lid for canning jars was enthusiastically received in early 2024 by brands like Weck, Kilner, and Bormiolli Rocco. Our fans worldwide gratefully use this upgrade, which the clamp jar had been waiting almost 200 years for. Several sets are available, with or without Kilner canning jars in various sizes.

We’re curious about your creations and experiences. Share them with us on social media via #airtenderofficial, and maybe we’ll pick up your recipe or post, and you could win a nice prize!