how do you cook meat to perfection?

If you cook with knowledge, nothing is really difficult in the kitchen. Want to serve a dry chicken fillet or tough stew? That won’t happen so quickly if you know what you’re doing. To understand what happens to meat when you prepare it, it is especially important that you know what meat consists of.

The chicken fillet that you fry or the steak that you grill is (part of) the muscle of an animal. The muscle consists of three types of tissue: muscle tissue, adipose tissue and the connective tissue to which it is connected to the bone. The ratio between these tissues varies per type of meat.

For example, stew meat contains a lot of connective tissue, while a sirloin steak and steak consist mainly of muscle tissue. The amount of fat depends on the animal species and breed. Meat from pigs contains more fat than that from cattle. It therefore usually remains more tender than beef after preparation, because fat is softer than muscle tissue.

Whether you like a lot or little fat is a matter of taste. As a chef, I prefer a little fat because lean meat tends to dry out quickly during frying.

Rest
It is important to let meat rest for a while after cooking. While resting, the meat cools slightly, causing the meat juices to thicken. They therefore flow less quickly from the meat. While resting, cover meat loosely with aluminum foil or place it in a warm place next to the stove. Five minutes of rest is enough for steak or entrecote.

The amount of connective tissue and muscle tissue in a piece of meat determines how you should prepare it. Tender meat and chicken parts that mainly consist of muscle tissue, such as pork tenderloin, steak and chicken fillet, should not be allowed to get too hot. Above 65 degrees Celsius, muscle tissue quickly starts to lose moisture and becomes dry.

The exact opposite applies to meat and chicken parts that contain a lot of connective tissue, such as steak, shoulder steaks, chicken legs and pork tenderloin. This requires a lot of heat because the connective tissue only converts into soft gelatin above 80 to 90 degrees.

You could call this the meat paradox: every piece of meat or chicken always contains a bit of both tissues, but for preparation the tissue that occurs most is decisive.

Just like making the perfectly boiled egg, it is also important to do a temperature check when frying meat. When I talk about letting meat get ‘too hot’, I’m referring to the core temperature, not the outside. For a nice brown crust you cannot avoid baking or grilling at a high temperature.

The art of properly preparing tender meat is therefore: first heat it briefly and intensely, then let it cook slowly. You do this in oil, because butter burns if it gets too hot.

If you want butter for flavor, only add it at the end of the preparation, while cooking. Many chefs continue to cook their tender meat and chicken fillets in the oven after frying them in the pan. This way you have better control over the core temperature.

How long you need to continue cooking depends on the desired length cuisson. The core temperature of a pink steak is approximately 55 degrees, that of a well-done steak is approximately 65 degrees. With a core temperature meter, preparing meat becomes a breeze. Another useful trick to keep control is to cook in reverse: first in the oven and then in the pan.

First in the oven
Instead of hot-frying tender meat and cooking it at a low temperature, you can also first heat a steak or chicken fillet in an oven at 55 degrees Celsius until the entire piece has the temperature of pink-fried meat. Cook to 65 degrees, if you like it well done. That takes 30-40 minutes for a steak or chicken fillet of 3 centimeters thickness. Because the meat already has the desired core temperature, you can then brown it very briefly (about 30 seconds) in a hot pan. From a food safety point of view, a higher core temperature of 68 degrees applies to chicken fillet and pork tenderloin.

When preparing stew meat you have to choose between two evils. It is inevitable that the muscle tissue in stew meat will lose moisture, because you need a temperature of at least 85 degrees for it to become tender. Because moisture retention is impossible in any case, it is better to focus on the maximum conversion of connective tissue into gelatin.

The amount of gelatin in your stew determines its softness. This conversion is most efficient in the pressure cooker. Much better than on low heat, as recommended in recipes. First fry the stew for flavor and then cook it under pressure. This way you have super tender brisket or hash in just 45 minutes.

Chef delves into Cooking with Knowledge Eke Mariën in the science behind cooking. He wrote several cookbooks and runs an online cooking platform full of videos and recipes.