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My (inexpert) thought is that it would actually be the releasing of the vacuum that would drive the marinade into the meat. Which makes me wonder: does the rate of pressure release make a difference? How about repeating the process several times? Hum.

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> How about repeating the process several times?

No idea if it does help, but that is exactly what the 'marination mode' on chamber vacuum sealers does. (And also disables the sealing bar.)

Too late to edit but just to expand on that - I think there's a tendency (see TFA, comments here) to jump to meat as soon as anyone says 'marination', but the article doesn't actually say it doesn't work full stop. If anything the marshmallow experiment kind of implies marinating marshmallows (for example) would work well. People use the same method (bowl in a vacuum chamber repeatedly negatively pressurised and released, not a sealed bag) to (supposedly) speed up (immersion, not fermentation) pickling.

Your comment about pickling reminded me of something novel I saw recently - fast-pickling with whipped cream chargers. I haven't tested this, but the claim is that the high pressure drastically accelerates the pickling process (I believe the example I saw was a ten minute cucumber pickle)

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