Culinary Arts: How to Tenderize Meats Like a Pro!
By habee
Culinary arts and online cooking school
Welcome again to my online cooking school and culinary arts school. Today’s culinary art is how to tenderize meat, especially for BBQ cooking. Learning to do this properly can save you major bucks on your grocery bills. You can easily turn cheap cuts of meats into tender, juicy servings, at a fraction of the cost!
There are actually several methods for tenderizing meat. One is to use a chemical powder that’s made from papaya or pineapple. Other methods involve baking soda or salt, and another is the use of marinades, including grilling marinades. Tough muscle fibers can also be broken down manually.
Using a powdered meat tenderizer
Some cooks think they can just sprinkle the powder on the surface of the meat and voila – their job is done. Wrong! The tenderizer has to get into the meat in order to work. If it just sits on the surface, the surface will get “mushy,” and the inside of the cut will still be tough.
To get the powdered tenderizer throughout the meat, pierce the steak, chop, or fillet with a sharp knife or fork all over. Then coat that side with the powder. Sprinkle on some liquid to help the powder reach the inside of the meat. You can use water, but to add flavor, you might want to use fruit juice, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, teriyaki, vinegar, or wine.
When you’ve treated one side of the meat, turn it over and repeat the process with the other side.
Using baking soda as a meat tenderizer
Baking soda is how Chinese restaurants get that velvet texture in stir-fries. This method is best for thinly sliced meat, seafood, or poultry that’s used in dishes like stir-fries and fajitas.
Thinly slice the meat across the grain. This is important! The slicing alone will help make the meat more tender because you’re doing away with the long muscle fibers.
Next, work the baking soda into the meat, using your hands. Use about one teaspoon of baking soda for each pound of meat.
Let the meat sit for about 20 minutes, then rinse thoroughly. Place the strips of meat or poultry between layers of paper towels and press firmly to remove all the water. Cook as desired.
Using salt as a meat tenderizer
This method works great for thick steaks and chops, especially on the grill. The salt draws water from the meat, then some of the salt is absorbed into the meat. Salt relaxes the muscle fibers, causing the meat to become more tender. The salty protein cells also tend to trap fat, making the meat juicier.
To use this method, coat – don’t sprinkle – the meat or poultry with salt. Let it rest for 20-60 minutes, but no more. Rinse the meat thoroughly and pat it completely dry with paper towels. Grill until desired doneness.
For even more flavor, add crushed garlic to the salt. As the salt enters the muscle fibers, it will take the garlic with it.
Manually tenderizing meat
One of the best ways to break up tough muscle fibers is by using a meat mallet. These are usually made of wood or metal, but I like the metal ones because they’re so much heavier. Simply pound both sides of the meat with the mallet. If you don’t have a mallet, the opening of a two-liter soda bottle makes a decent substitute.
Of course, when you pound the meat, it’s going to be flattened, so you probably don’t want to do this to a steak that’s going on the grill. For these, break up the muscle fibers with a fork or the point of a sharp knife.
Marinades for tenderizing
Any acidic liquid will help tenderize meat and also infuse flavor. These include wines, vinegar, and acidic fruit juices like pineapple, lemon, lime, and orange. You can also add other flavors like minced garlic, rosemary, basil, or sliced onions.
Just cover the meat with the marinade and place in the fridge for a couple of hours to overnight. The tougher the cut, the longer it needs to marinate.
For tough cuts of beef for the grill, I often use the powdered tenderizer method and grilling marinades. Here are some of the grilling marinades I use:
White wine – chicken, fish, shrimp
Red wine – beef
Pineapple juice – chicken, pork
Orange juice – chicken, pork
Teriyaki or soy sauce – chicken, beef, shrimp, pork
Lemon juice – shrimp, fish
Lime juice – shrimp, fish, chicken
Vinegar – game, large pork roasts
Italian dressing – chicken, wild game
Also, experiment with mixing liquids together for great marinades. Try Italian dressing and pineapple juice for chicken wings, vinegar and orange juice for pork roasts, and white wine and line juice for shrimp. Be creative!
To read more about culinary arts, click the links below:
Buy a meat tenderizer:
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Comments
I love your introduction Habee!
I nominate you as our hubpages online culinary director of fine southern cuisine. :)
I have rated it up and bookmarked it.
Thanks for the great info. I especially appreciated the baking soda moisturizing tip.
Thanks habee. I really needed to learn more about this subject. Just the other day I was pulverizing a piece of meat wondering if I really was accomplishing anything.
I particularly like your suggestions for marinades. I'm going to try a fruit juice and see how I like it.
habee, thanks for such a helpful hub. I have bookmarked this so I can go back later and share it with my wife. Voted it up. You are simply amazing.
Prasetio, you're already part of my online cooking school!
Many thanks, Veronica! Since I couldn't have a real culinary school, I started my own online culinary school!
Glad you enjoyed my online cooking classes, Jen!
This was most informative, habee. I'm always wary about coking red meat because I'm scared it will remain tough. Maybe I should give it another try! :)
Thank you, habee. The main ingredient in meat tenderizers is the enzyme found in papaya skins. It is called papain. In the countries where papaya grows, the people knew this so they used papaya together with the meat, without knowing the enzyme there.
I am glad I learned more methods to tenderize meat. Thank you!!
Thank you, habee, for such a lot of good tips. I never knew about baking soda.
Those sound like some great tips. I think I'll have to give one of those tenderizing methods a try this week! Keep the cooking tips coming :)
I personally like the meat mallet - I seem to enjoy pounding the living heck out of meat or chicken. I once substituted (on vacation) a heavy pan because I did not want to spend the money at the trendy little store in town and buy another meat mallet when I had 2 at home already. We were staying in a condo and the next door neighbor actually came over to see 'what was wrong' when she heard the pounding - too hilarious. I met her at the door with the pan in hand and told her I was just whacking my husband! (She did look at me a little funny and paled a bit) Yikes...ah well - I digress. Wonderful tips!
Thanks, Bpop! I'm headed over now for a late breakfast!
Let me know how you like it, Sheila!
Sambo, you are so good for my ego! I always love reading your comments!
Try, try again, FP!
Right, Msorennson; pineapple serves the same purpose. Thanks for visiting!
Give it a try, HH! See what you can learn in my online cooking classes? lol
Thanks, Jen. I hope to do a lot more online cooking classes!
Audrey, next time try the opening of an empty 2-liter soda bottle! Of course, I don't think it would prove effective on Bob's head!
Ya never know! Thanks for the tip! I seriously think the lady thought I was mincing up someone and putting him or her in the freezer! She did not look happy with my explanation....go figure!
Habee, Some of those meat tenderizers sound great. Good hub.
Aud, you should have offered her some "barbecue"!! Ha!
Thanks, Pam!
Culinary Arts: How to Tenderize Meats Like a Pro! Great hub, thanks for the info. Every time I grill a pork loin the thing ends up like an old boot, leathery. I am looking foreward to using the marinades you discussed and the baking powder tenderizer method. Wish me luck...
Teddle, maybe you're cooking it at too high a temp? Johnny usually slow cooks ours on an electric smoker over pecan twigs, and it's awesome! I wrote a hub about using an electric smoker.
You've given us a whole list of new ideas! Pat tends to marinade meat, usually with a lot of seasoning. Tricia has several food sensitivities and needs to be very careful, so we will try some of your suggestions. Thanks for such a useful hub - we're rating it up.
Great! I give both Patricias an A+ in my online cooking school!
Thank you for sharing these really great tips. They were very useful.
Thanks, Nancy!
Huh..Didn't know about the baking soda tenderizing! Nice job.
Glad the info was useful, Chevy!
This could be the answer to my prayers. I'm going to try these...I hate tough meat and my results are spotty at best right now.
Mulberry, hope you get great results!
Thanks for this hub! I learned a lot, and now I'm not as leery to go and get those tough cuts of meat. My problem was that I wasn't letting them marinate long enough. I'm also anxious to try baking soda with stir fry beef. Fascinating. Thanks!
I usually let meats soak in marinades for much longer than recipes suggest!
Habee, what about BEER? I am sure you have heard of Beer Can Chicken? Beer also works well as a marinade to tenderize meats.
I wanted to add something to your suggestion of using pineapple juice as a marinade. Pineapple contains bromelain, a natural meat tenderizer. Unfortunately, bromelain is deactivated by heat and commercial pineapple juice is pasteurized so the bromelain is inactive. Try throwing some fresh pineapple in a blender and use that in a marinade, you'll be amazed by how tender your meat comes out, be careful though, it is such a potent marinade that it has the ability to overtenderize the meat and make it mushy.
I came to ask for help. I've tried the baking soda method twice. Both times I rinsed everything thoroughly. However both times, the entire thing began to smell terrible when I started cooking it. It was slimy, and the sauce tasted like seawater. A suggestion of what could have gone wrong would be very helpful. Thanks in advance :)
I think cheap, tough cuts have better flavor. I appreciate learning how to better tenderize my tough cuts.
prasetio30 24 months ago
It would be fun join this school. Actually I liked something about education and you also educated me well. Thanks for share about this, good topic. Two thumbs up for you.
Prasetio