The Best Hacks for Cooking Meat

 

Hey meat lovers! Grilling and cooking steaks and chicken is one of life’s absolute delights. The sound of the searing meat and the juices it produces are just mouthwatering, and it’s only natural that you want to cook the best piece of meat you can get your hands on. But the result not only depends on purchasing the right kind of meat. There’s also plenty of things you do while prepping and cooking the meat that can affect the result greatly. If you want to learn some of the best cooking hacks for meat, keep reading.

 

Pepper after the meat is cooked

This is probably one of the things people do the most. For ages we’ve been taught that meat must be seasoned before putting it into the pan or grill so the steak seals in the flavor. But you might be surprised that we’ve all been taught wrong! When pepper is cooked or gets in contact with the skillet, it simply burns. This makes for a burnt taste in your meat. Instead of doing that, try only adding some salt and a little bit of cornstarch to your meat, cook it, and once it’s done you can add the pepper.

 

Reduce the cooking time

One of the hardest things about cooking or grilling meat and chicken on any type of tool (skillet, pan, oven…) is to get the cooking time right. It’s pretty common to end up with a piece of meat that’s overcooked on the outside but a little raw on the inside. If you want to get the term of your meat just right try using a meat tenderizer. With just a few pounds of a mallet tool you can soften your meat enough for it to be more manageable.  A softer piece of meat also means less cooking time with better results.

 

Flip your steaks a lot

When learning to cook steaks you might’ve been told many times that they should only be flipped once to avoid overcooking. This is a huge myth that many experts can debunk. If you want to have a juicy steak with even cooking on the inside and outside, you want to flip it a lot. Expert chefs recommend turning a steak a total of 6 times while you have it on the grill, making sure to grill for 3 to 4 minutes on each side. Don’t forget to check the edges so it’ll all cook beautifully.

 

Marinate after cooking

The most common thing to see in a meat recipe is to prepare the marinade and soak your steak or chicken in it for several minutes before getting it on the skillet or grill. While this may be how it has been done for many years, it’s actually not the best way to do it. If you marinade your meat while it’s still raw, it becomes much harder to cook the steak and it takes much more time (creating the risk of it getting cooked unevenly), plus the sugars in the marinade will stick to your skillet and make it a real pain to clean. The best time to marinate your meat is right after it’s cooked and while you let it rest, the steak will still soak up in flavor and you’ll have extra “sauce” to serve.

 

With these simple cooking hacks you’ll now have the ability to prepare steaks and other meats like a total pro. Let the grilling begin!