Kenya's award winning barbecue chef reveals the secret of preparing meat to make it tender
The manner in which you cook your meat also determines how tender your meat will become.
A tough meat can reduce what was otherwise a sumptuous meal into a laborious tasteless meal, leaving consumers feeling like they are chewing rubber.
Experience meat lovers and cooks have therefore developed a talent of sorts of knowing just how to choose and cook tender meat.
So in a bid to get to the bottom of this ‘meaty issue’ Business Insider SSA literary went to the Kitchen with one of Kenya’s finest barbecue master, Tony Onyango.
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Mr. Onyango who is popularly known as ‘Jah Juok’ is an award winning barbecue master and Jack Daniel’s brothers of the grill people’s category double winner.
“The tenderness of your meat depends on many things, it depends for one and I have learnt this from interacting with different people and practical experience, the tenderness of your meat depends on how you cut it” Said Tony who is a banker by the day.
All meat be it beef, pork, lamb, or chicken consists of muscle, connective tissue, and fat.
The toughest cuts have a lot of connective tissue and come from a heavily exercised muscle while the tenderest cuts are those that have very little connective tissue and come from a little-used muscle.
Exercise increases the amount of connective tissue within the muscles, making them tougher.
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“If you cut the meat going with the muscles you are going to have a tough meat because you are going to only eat muscles. You have muscles running in one direction if you cut the meat in that direction you will end up with the muscles now you can imagine trying to eat up your muscles”
“So that meat has to be cut against the muscles, if you do that then you have a more chewable meat”
The manner in which you cook your meat also determines how tender your meat will become, high temperature destroys not only the texture but the color and flavor as well.
“But the trick with meat is the amount of time and method of cooking, high flame never cooks meat you might think it is ready it tastes ready but it is not ready, you are better off with a slow cook, a longer cook and you will enjoy your meat”
At the end of the day though, Tony says just like many things in life practice makes perfect and cooking meat is not a one day affair.
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“I think it is a craft people have to learn how to properly cook meat with time”
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Email: news@pulselive.co.ke
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