Tips and Techniques: Part 1

Here are tips and techniques for cooking meat that might serve you well! We'll do more in another post.

Cooking Meat:

The general technique of cooking any red meat is the same. You want a good crust to form as it provides a greater depth of flavour. You want your meat to be at room temperature before cooking it. If you put cold meat in a hot pan, your meat contracts exponentially and cooks unevenly. You also want to season your meat generously. It can handle it and most of the seasoning will be lost in the pan when cooking.

This tip, however, is perhaps the most important. How do you know how cooked your meat is? First, the science. The more cooked a piece of meat is, the more taut its fibres are and its flavour is affected accordingly. Well, to tell how cooked your meat is, you can stick a meat thermometer in. Doing this, however, causes its juice to escape.

Here is what I do. Touch your forehead - that is what a well-done piece of meat feels like. Touch your chin - that is what a medium piece of meat feels like. Touch your cheek - that is what a rare piece of meat feels like. And so if I want a medium piece of meat, I will let the meat cook till it feels somewhere between my cheek and chin. So i touch my meat ever so often during the cooking process. Remember, cooking is about how it feels, the smells, the look, the taste, the sound. This tip focusses exclusively on the feel.

Note that you should let your meat rest. As meat cooks, it releases its juices. The higher the heat, the more your meat fibres contract and the more juices are released. Resting your meat for about 1/5 the time that it is cooked allows the meat fibre to relax and for it to reabsorb its juices. If you cut your meat immediately, your meat will be tough and all the juices will leak on the board. Medium meat can and is usually served warm as a result, not hot.

Another way to tell how cooked your meat is this. As you cook your meat, you will begin to see blood pierce the surface of your meat. When this happens, your meat is now cooked to a medium-rare and will become medium after you rest it. Again, remember. You want to cook your meat slightly less than how you want it because it continues to cook from residual heat as it rests.

How exactly to go about cooking a piece of meat I will cover at another time. Anything else you want to learn? Let me know!