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According to author Krish Ashok, baking soda is the second most versatile ingredient in the kitchen — after eggs. “Sodium bicarbonate aerates, relieves, cooks, browns, cleans, and deoderises. It is the ‘Marvel Superhero’ of kitchen ingredients,” he said in an Instagram post. Notably, the common baking ingredient is known to give a fluffy texture to cakes, muffins, and bread, but it has plenty of other uses too!
He shared that as an alkaline agent, baking soda neutralises acids. “The pancreas literally produces bicarbonates (like in Eno) to bring down the acid levels of the food that is passing from the stomach (that is super acidic) to the intestine (that will get dissolved if that strong acid makes it downwards)! If your pancreas thinks bicarbonates are safe for you, it’s ok for you to consume a tiny bit,” he captioned the video post.
He went on to list a few lesser-known uses of the ingredient.
*You want to cook chana or rajma without waiting, then a tiny pinch of baking soda is what you need — it breaks pectin in plant cell walls and it reduces cook time by half. This is why restaurants use it.
*A pinch of baking soda will make onions caramalise way faster.
*If you want your pakodas or meat to brown evenly, add a pinch of baking soda to the batter, it will accelerate the Maillard reaction.
According to the author, even if you don’t wish to consume it, baking soda can still be “super useful”.
*With vinegar, it is a fantastic cleaning and de-staining combination.
*A small tray of it in your refrigerator will remove all foul smells. Garima Goyal, a registered dietitian, agreed and added, “It eliminates the particles causing odour, rather than masking their odour. So, to remove that smell from your fridge, fill a cup with baking soda and place it at the back side of your refrigerator.”.
Apart from these, Goyal suggested mixing baking soda with coconut oil, shea butter, or corn starch and applying it on the armpits for “odour-free armpits”. “Baking soda lessens the acidic odour of sweat and so is used as a natural deodorant by many,” said Goyal, while advising against using too much, and doing a patch test first.
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