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Tenderize Meat: These are the Best Tips and Tricks

If you’re looking to tenderize meat, there are a few simple tips and tricks to help. The extra steps are well worth it, as the flavor of the meat is enhanced by its tender texture.

Tenderizing Meat: Pre-Prep Steps

With the right technique, you can tenderize any type of meat. The steps before the actual preparation are particularly important:

  • Cutting: To cook your piece of meat faster and not make it tough, cut it into smaller pieces. It is important to position the knife across the meat fiber.
  • When cutting, you break up the meat fibers, which changes the structure. As a result, the meat is not tough after later preparation, but tender.
  • Pounding: Before roasting, you should pound the meat until soft to loosen the meat fibers. It is best to use a metal meat mallet. This is heavier than one made of wood and thus breaks the meat fibers faster.
  • If you don’t have a meat tenderizer handy, you can use a small skillet.
  • Place the piece of meat on a cutting board. Take the meat mallet and pound the meat well on both sides.

Soften the meat with the marinade

The right marinade will make tough meat tender and soft. The most important element of such a marinade is acid. This breaks up meat fibers and makes the food particularly tender. Some fruits contain a lot of acids. These include fruits such as kiwi, lemon, papaya, or pineapple.

  1. Puree the fruit with a high-speed blender or hand blender. If you do not have such a device, simply cut the fruit into small pieces.
  2. Add the puree or chunks to the meat and mix well. Make sure to squash the meat a bit. This loosens the fibers and the fruit acid can work better.
  3. If you don’t have any fruit, but do have onions, that’s just as good. Buttermilk, kefir, or yogurt are also perfect for a marinade thanks to the lactic acid.
  4. Especially when roasting in the oven, you should put the meat in a marinade beforehand so that it does not become too dry.

How to prepare tender meat

Once you have processed and prepared the meat according to the two points above, you can start preparing it. There are two variants here:

  • Cook meat until tender: Fill a pot with water and place the piece of meat in it. Let the water boil. Then add a few halved onions to the water.
  • Let the meat simmer for a few hours. The onions cooked with it are there to make the meat tender.
  • It is important to cook the meat at low heat, but over a longer period of time. Goulash, for example, is usually left to simmer for 2 hours so that the beef is as soft as possible.
  • Tender meat from the frying pan: Put some oil in a pan and sear the piece of meat. The temperature should be around 70 degrees.
  • Add some water to the pan and let it simmer for a while. The pan should be covered with a lid.
  • To cook the seared meat, you can also put it in the oven. At around 90 degrees, the meat feels good.
  • Depending on the thickness of the piece, let it cook in the oven for up to an hour.
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Written by John Myers

Professional Chef with 25 years of industry experience at the highest levels. Restaurant owner. Beverage Director with experience creating world-class nationally recognized cocktail programs. Food writer with a distinctive Chef-driven voice and point of view.

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