Read This Before You Start Cooking Meat

2024 Author: Jasmine Walkman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 08:29

Meat - this valuable gift from the animal kingdom, which we receive from both domestic and wild animals, plays a predominant role in the kitchen. Its chemical composition: water, proteins or proteins, fats, salts, carbohydrates, lactic acids and extracts, make it a structuring element in the diet. It is the extractives that cause that specific smell, the aroma of the meat when we cook it.

The quality of meat largely depends on the muscles of the animal - breed, age, sex, diet. The flesh of a young animal is tender, but quite watery; from an adult, the meat is firmer, but rich in protein and extracts. When the animal is well fed, tireless, it gives fatty and tender meat. The meat of female animals, with the exception of pigs and geese, is more tender than that of males, but not as tasty.

When choosing meat for our table, it is advisable to know its origin, but in today's conditions of purchase and sale, it becomes increasingly difficult to choose a quality product.

In order to preserve the value of the meat, we must pay great attention to its preparation for the cooking process itself. For this purpose, it is necessary from the first moment when we bring it to the kitchen, to follow some recommendations.

1.) Place the meat on a porcelain plate, enameled or similar material, but not on wood - it sucks the meat juice;

2.) Before cooking, the meat should be pounded with a wooden hammer dipped in water - muscle fibers become more fragile and relatively easy to separate nutrients. Care must be taken not to tear the meat. It is recommended to cut into small pieces;

3.) The meat should be cleaned by washing vigorously with running lukewarm water and not soaked for a long time;

4.) If it is necessary to keep the meat fresh for several days in a row, this is best achieved through the marinade. Boil an equal amount of water and vinegar, adding chopped carrots, parsley root, onions, parsnips, celery and more. You can also add spices - bay leaf, allspice, peppercorns, cloves. The meat becomes extremely tender;

5.) An important condition for cooking with meat is not to pre-salt, but only when put in the dish.

We know several basic ways of cooking meat - cooking, stewing, roasting, frying.

When meat is boiled in cold water, which is gradually heated, a strong broth is obtained because of the proteins and salts passed into it - the main way to prepare soups. The meat itself, although it has lost a large part of its valuable substances, including the extracts, can be successfully served in diets, some salads, served with sauces and more. - A certain amount of protein remains in the muscle fibers.

If we want to keep all the necessary elements of meat for the body, we put them to boil in hot water. The proteins that are on the surface of the meat cross, clog the pores and prevent the release of nutrients.

By stewing we mean the process of heating meat into fat and its own juice. This is best done in well-sealed containers as well as in ceramic ones.

When roasting the meat is exposed to a very high temperature, it is drizzled with a little fat and acquires a crust, pleasant in taste and appearance.

Frying is done in hot fat, turning the crumb until fully cooked. In this process, from the high temperature, the proteins cross, clog the pores and the nutrients remain inside the meat - it becomes very tasty.