The Soda Tip To Add Subtly Sweet Flavor To Veggies

Even if you're not a fan of sweet, syrupy soft drinks, you'd be surprised at the numerous benefits and utilities they possess as an ingredient in food recipes. You might've heard of spiking barbecue sauce with coke, meat marinades with root beer or cake batter with club soda as some common ways to cook with soda. You can further extend their use to bolster the flavor of veggies.

The high sugar content in soda will benefit vegetables by providing a sweet, caramelized complement to their savory, bitter vegetal flavors. Furthermore, each type of soda has a key ingredient that gives it a distinct taste, whether it's sassafras in root beer, ginger in ginger ale, citrus in sprite, squirt, or orange soda. Therefore, soda is both a sweetener and a flavor agent.

Depending on how you incorporate it into a vegetable dish, the carbonation in soft drinks will have a delightful textural effect. Its use as a meat tenderizer also applies to vegetables, serving as a marinade to instill a juicy tenderness to any raw hard veggie. Just as soda makes the crumb of both cakes and bread light and airy, carbonation will also lighten up a vegetable sauce or puree.

You have many avenues for adding soda to vegetable recipes. You can blend them with oils, spices, and other liquid seasonings to create a marinade or glaze for roasted or grilled vegetables. Add a splash of soda to tomato-based pasta sauces or salsas or pureed cream of vegetable soups.

The possibilities for soda and vegetable pairings are endless as most vegetables will benefit from a sweet balance. An important factor to consider is what the other underlying tasting notes in your soda of choice will bring to the table. For instance, a citrusy orange soda will make a great sweet and tangy foundation in a jerk marinade that you can use to tenderize and flavor roasted or grilled peppers, onions, zucchini, and yellow squash. You can add Coca-Cola to a tangy barbecue glaze for meaty, umami-rich king oyster mushroom steaks.

Sprite or grapefruit soda would work well to temper the spiciness of chili peppers in a habanero salsa. It'd also work well instead of sugar in this quick tomato sauce recipe from Tasting Table. You can use Coke or Dr. Pepper to tenderize raw carrots, parsnips, or rutabaga before roasting them to reduce cooking times, neutralize bitterness, and enhance their caramelized flavors.

For other bitter veggies like Brussels sprouts, collard greens, and broccoli, sweet Coca-Cola would make a great braising liquid. You could also blend Coke with soy sauce, peppercorns, and rice vinegar to create a sweet and savory stir-fry sauce for mushrooms, broccoli, or Japanese eggplant. You could swap beer for ginger ale to blend with flour in a tasty frying batter for any of your favorite vegetables. With some creativity and bottles of soda, your vegetables will never be the same again.