Meat is an animal tissue that includes muscle and fats, often eaten as food. Eating a balanced diet with all nutrients is one of the keys to a healthy lifestyle. But make sure you eat healthy meat like poultry, fish, seafood and pork that are lean and rich in protein. Whether hosting a party, looking for a holiday cookout, you need to serve some stir fries and tackle with tough meat. Baking soda is one such single ingredient which goes well with any recipe to keep it soft and cooking easy. Apart from this, there are several other ways to make your tough meat soft that works best for meats. Try these 7 most effective ways to make your tough cooked meat into tenderized meat.
7. Pound It Out
Pounding softens and tenderizes meat, making it easier to cut and eat. One of the easiest and cleanest ways to do this is to sandwich the meat between a couple of pieces of plastic wrap or wax paper and pound it before cooking. The other way is using meat pounders and meat mallets, which is a hammer-like instrument which is very effective for pounding steaks and thinner slices of meat. Mechanical tenderization breaks down tough muscle fibers and connective tissue. As heavy force is applied on the meat, it breaks up the connective tissue and collagen around the muscle fibers, causing the muscle fibers to separate and the meat to be tenderer.
Pounding helps in the relocation of juices throughout the muscle fibers of meat into thin cuts of meat. It is the best way to soften and tenderize your tough meat. Too aggressive pounding damages the meat. Use a meat mallet with a textured side to break down those tough muscle fibers.
Pro Tip: A simple way to pound the tough meat is to cover the meat with plastic wrap or wax paper to ease the task of pounding with the rough edge of a meat mallet before cooking. Wrapping the meat in cover helps to prevent splatter and make cleanup easy. Pounding is thus a pro tip, which is an important step to tenderize a piece of meat that is thick at one end, such as chicken breasts.
6. Cook Low and Slow
More expensive cuts of meat require to be cooked over high temperatures, but many budget-friendly cuts of meat, like chuck roast or pork shoulder, require low-and-slow cooking techniques. You can also braise tough cuts of meat as they contain collagen, which needs to be prolonged. Thus, braising helps the collagen breakdown into gelatin while meat is in cooking liquid and helps those tough muscle fibers separate, making meat tender. Make sure you give enough time to the cuts of meat breakdown; this entire process can take 4 or more hours if using a Dutch oven or slow cooker.
Cooking slow and low means the method of cooking food at a very low temperature for a period of long time. As we know, slow and steady wins the race. To soften the tough meat, braising, stewing, pressure-cooking, and slow cooking are all excellent low-and-slow methods. Though the process of cooking is slow, it is always worth waiting for. Using this slow and low method, the flavor and softness of tough meat are unbeatable!
Best Cuts: Beef brisket, chuck roast, pork shoulder, short ribs, lamb shanks, and tougher game meats. These cuts are known as primal cuts of beef, which belong to regions where more motion is observed. When preparing and cooking these best cuts, one needs to take extra care. Tenderloin steaks, Rib-eye and Sirloin are cuts taken primarily from the mid-upper back of an animal that has fewer movements. So these cuts are economical, being soft, they are tender and juicy.
5. Harness the Power of Acids
Although braising and stewing will make the cuts of meat tender and soft, there are a few tenderizers which play a key role in softening the tough meat. Acids in ingredients like vinegar, lemon juice, yogurt, or buttermilk partially break down proteins, tenderizing the meat. Thus, acidification of meat not only improves texture but also increases susceptibility to lipid oxidation.
Key: Marinades, not quick dips. Thus, the combination of acid marination works best when allowing the meat to soak for a good amount of time. During this time, acid penetrates into the tough cut of meat deep inside and does their magic. Be cautious. Don’t overdo it, or else your meat can turn mushy. Harness the power of acids as tenderness determines the quality of meat.
Dairy’s Difference: Whole milk, yogurt and buttermilk all serve the job of tenderizer very well. Milk being rich in calcium helps enzymes react in the meat to gently soften the protein. There is a slight difference when using dairy products such as Lactic acid in yogurt and buttermilk is milder, perfect for overnight marinades.
4. Salt to the Rescue
Salt is one of the ingredients that is unavoidable in any recipe to satisfy your taste buds. When the meat is marinated with salt, through osmosis, it helps the meat retain the moisture content in the meat and concentrate the flavors inside to create natural salt water. Salt is the foundation of any marinade and alters proteins for a more tender texture. During this process, the meat turns darker and red. Over marinated or under marinated meat can turn leathery in texture, so always consider the time and right process of marination.
Unlike other marinades, you can apply salt on your meat in advance for about 24 hours. It is known as salt to the rescue process. Dry brining (salting in advance and letting sit) is highly effective. Make sure you include salt in marinades for even better results. But make sure you are marinating your meat in a glass bowl or plastic container and cover it with plastic wrap. Try to turn your meat in between so that all sides are coated and marinated evenly. Never use metal containers like steel as they get reacted due to acidic mixture in salt.
Time is Key: Any tenderizer requires its own time to break down the tough muscles of meat to make them soft and tender. Salt needs a minimum of 40 minutes, but consider overnight marinating is best for brining true results. But be careful if meat marinated with salt left far in advance shows adverse affects as it can make meat have a leathery texture.
3. Fruit Enzymes to Tenderize
There are several acidic fruits which act as tenderize when considering meat. Pineapple (bromelain), kiwi (actinidin), and papaya (papain) contain powerful enzymes. When using any of these fruits, they tenderize the enzymes that help to break down the protein that contain amino acids in meats such as pork, beef and chicken. Apart from fruits, there are other vegetable tenderizers which best act as fruit tenderizers. They are namely lemon, vinegar, baking soda, ginger, beer or wine etc. Always keep a few of them handy if you are struck with the heavy duty of meat to make it tender and soft, making it chewable.
The enzymes in fruits break down the protein in meat as quick surface tenderizing for thin cuts of meat. Overuse of fruit enzymes turns meat mushy. There are primarily two types of enzymes considered for meat tenderization. They are proteolytic enzymes and microbial enzymes. Being natural tenderizers of meat, they are well known for improving the quality and lusciousness of meat products. Enjoy your tough meat brunch!
Practical Use: Fruits like papaya, mango, kiwi, pineapple and fig have active enzymes to pair with meat. These fruits contain an enzyme called protease which helps in the breakdown of protein when used to puree fruit, as a marinade base (acid helps activate the enzymes) for an hour. It speeds up the tenderization process of tough meat. However, make sure you remove it completely before cooking the meat to avoid the fruit flavor infusing into the meat to taste it like it’s beefy flavor with extreme tenderness. The enzymes present in pineapple fruit and fermented food like kimchi help in good digestion.
2. Commercial Tenderizer
Usually powdered papain (from papaya), bromelain and ficin are some of the commonly used plant proteases that act as commercial tenderizers for meat. Some have extra seasonings. Always keep a stock of them as they are best for heavy-duty meat tenderization that is not soft but tough. A commercial tenderizer is generally observed in big industrial units and restaurants to soften the tough meat, which is a desired texture of meat after cooking.
Getting a handy commercial meat tenderizer eases the task of cooking tough meat. It is one of the best kitchen tools that is designed to marinate, tenderize, BBQ and flavor maximizer of meat in restaurants and food processing units. Make sure it is your last option when other methods aren’t feasible. Usage of a commercial tenderizer can alter the flavor of meat slightly.
A meat tenderizer helps a lot with pounding down tough parts of the meat, which improves the texture of meat, making it soft and tender and is easy to chew. They also help in smoothening uneven parts of meat after pounding. This tool works amazingly for most cuts of meat. Once done with the process, slightly sprinkle on moistened meat just before cooking.
1. Slice Against the Grain
Slice against the grain means slicing meat using a sharp knife to cut perpendicular across the grain or to these lines. This is vital after cooking. We know that muscle fibers run in one direction; cutting across them before or after cooking shortens the fibers for easier chewing. Slice against the grain can also mean doing things in a different way from others. Sometimes we want to go against the grain. We don’t want to do things the way everyone else does. Artists often try to go against the grain and take no notice of the common, popular trends of the day.
All you need to do is lay the meat flat on a cutting board and pay attention to the striations of the meat. You can see some lines going from left to right. Marble the meat to cut it with a sharp knife across the grain through those perpendicular lines. Here, “grain” refers to those muscular fibers which are aligned on the meat. In a few minutes, your tough meat cuts into slices for easy cooking.
There are different types of steak cuts, namely: flank, skirt, hanger etc., and some roasts. Among these, the flank cut is often mistaken for the skirt and the hanger cut. So make sure which type of cut is required for your meat to ease your cooking task for tough meat. The best example of going against the grain is to go opposite to someone’s natural disposition: “Having to get up this early in the morning really goes against my grain.” It clearly refers to the fact that a person who rubs his hand against the grain on a piece of lumber will get splinters.
