The longer you cook the beef, the softer it is. How to cook meat so it is tender

25.06.2019

The most capricious meat, of course, is beef. The easiest way to spoil it. Incorrect pre-preparation and heat treatment will turn even the highest quality product into a dry and unappetizing brew. But knowing a few tricks on how to cook beef so that it is soft, you can always enjoy juicy and aromatic meat. The most important rule is as follows. Place the meat in boiling water. They put it in cold, if you need to get a rich broth. After this preparation, the cooked meat can be used only in a salad. It will become dryish. Therefore, all experienced chefs put beef only in boiling water. This is the first step to a great result.

There is also a simple old method that can be used to achieve the desired effect. This method is used if the original product is hard. An hour after the water with meat has boiled, pour one spoonful of vodka or alcohol into the pan. Alcohol will do its job, and the finished boiled meat will be soft. To get a good cooked lamb, many rub the pieces of meat with mustard (preferably powder). Soak for 7-10 hours. Then, before cooking, the mustard must be carefully scraped off with a knife or washed off with water. Cook for several hours. Lamb after such a spicy marinade will turn out not only soft, but will also acquire an additional aroma to its bouquet.

Of particular interest is the way in which the meat is aged in mineral water two hours. Then it is placed in boiling water and, with the lid closed, cooked until tender. In no case should you salt at the beginning of the process. Do this 15-20 minutes before the end. You need to cook meat at a temperature of 90-94 ° C. After finishing, do not rush to remove it from the pan. The meat should lie in the broth for another 10-15 minutes. You can determine the readiness of the product by piercing it with a thin knife. If a colorless liquid flows out of the piece, then the meat is ready. You can cut it into thin slices and, having laid it beautifully on a platter, serve it on the table. Home people will surely appreciate not only the aroma, but also the juiciness of the meat.

During preliminary preparation you also need to take into account certain points that affect the final result. So, for example, you need to cut meat on a wet board. If you do this on a dry board, then the wood will absorb some of the meat juice. And this will affect the taste and juiciness. ready meal... Defrosting meat also needs to be done correctly. To do this, put a piece of meat in a closed vessel. When completely thawed, put in the refrigerator. In the cold, the muscle tissue will again absorb all the juice leaked out during defrosting. All these points, of course, must be taken into account so as not to complain about the toughness of the boiled meat later.

The vegetables added to the broth also affect the taste of the dish. So, to improve the bouquet, carrots, onions, roots are placed in water with meat half an hour before readiness. Any meat, whether it is boiled beef, pork or lamb, will be juicier if it is cooked in a whole, large piece. Chopped small pieces, it is likely to be dry and tasteless. In addition, if there is fat on the meat, then it is better to cut it off after the end of cooking. The fact is that the fat will preserve all the meat juices and prevent them from leaking out during the boil. The result will meet all expectations.

Experienced chefs are not afraid to cook boiled meat. Young hostesses, who are just starting their journey at the stove, are wary of this process. They are simply afraid of ruining the product with their inability. But knowing the secrets described above and using them, you can easily cook aromatic and juicy meat for the family.

Boiled beef Is a versatile product that can be served cold for breakfast, as a hot main course. Boiled beef is added to various salads, served as an appetizer and made from it delicious sandwiches... Boiled beef also leaves a wonderful tasty and aromatic broth that can be used to cook any first course.

In order to properly cook beef, and it turned out to be soft and tender, you need to know some nuances and tips. Then you will not be ashamed to put your beef on the table for treating guests.

In order to properly cook beef, you need to choose a rump, rump or shoulder blade. In order for the meat to turn out fragrant, you need to put the following ingredients in the broth: celery root, Bay leaf, black peppercorns, salt, carrots, parsley root, parsley, onions, garlic, leeks, turnips, thyme and other aromatic foods and herbs. You don't have to put all of these foods in the broth. You can choose vegetables, herbs and spices to your liking.

Defrost beef in a bowl of water. The meat is placed in water and covered with a towel, and kept for 2-3 hours. When the beef is completely thawed, it is washed under running cold water, after which it is cleaned of films and tendons with a sharp knife.

Put the prepared beef in a small saucepan and fill it with water. Ideally, the pot should be about the size of a piece of meat. Beef should be poured not with cold water, but with boiling water. Then all the meat juice will remain in the meat. During cooking, the meat should take on a light color. After that, the heat must be reduced and cooked until foam appears. The resulting foam must be removed, otherwise the broth will be spoiled, and the beef itself will be covered with unpleasant flakes. After the broth boils again, the meat will need to be cooked over low heat and salt the broth.

You need to cook beef with closed lid... This is done so that the broth does not evaporate and then there would be no need to add new water. What can spoil the broth. Also, if no oxygen enters the pan, the fats will not be able to oxidize. But if, nevertheless, it was not possible to keep track of and, the water has significantly evaporated, you need to add water, but always hot, so that there are no temperature changes.

How long it will take to cook the meat depends on the quality of the beef itself, what sort of it, what size of the piece of meat, or how old the animal was. On average, meat by weight of 1 kilogram should be cooked for 2 hours. To find out that the meat has been cooked, you need to pierce it with a knife. If the meat is already soft enough, then it's done.

Spices such as bay leaves, carrots, onions and roots should be put into the broth half an hour before the end of cooking. If this is done at the very beginning of cooking, the aroma will be lost and the beef will not be so tasty.

After the meat has been cooked, it is left in the broth for another 15 minutes so that it is nourished. After that, the meat is removed from the broth and cut into portions.

For storage, boiled beef is wrapped in foil and placed in the refrigerator.

Delicious beef with sauce

If there is a piece of beef in your refrigerator, you don't feel like stewing and baking it, then you can cook a very simple and tasty dish from boiled meat with sauce.

This simple meat under the enveloping and juicy gravy will diversify your menu and will delight you with the fact that you have to tinker a little - just make the sauce quickly. And the meat will be cooked practically without your participation.

The cheese sauce for meat has a distinctly creamy flavor and goes very well with boiled beef, enveloping it with its cheesy tenderness and adding the necessary juiciness to the dryish beef meat.

What is needed for boiled beef under cheese sauce

for 4 servings

  • A piece of beef - 500-600 g;
  • Water - 1.5 l;
  • Bay leaf - 1 piece;
  • Allspice and black peppercorns - 2 pieces each;
For cheese sauce
  • Cooled meat broth- 0.5 l;
  • Butter - 60 g;
  • Flour - 1 tablespoon;
  • Egg yolk - 1;
  • Grated cheese - 50 g;
  • Salt and pepper to taste.
  • For a beautiful sauce, you can add 0.5 teaspoon of turmeric.

Like cheese sauce

Boil beef

  • Boil water in a saucepan, put clean meat in it. How to boil - remove the foam and add all the pepper, bay leaf and peeled onion. Salt lightly.
  • Cook the beef covered over low heat, about 1.5 hours. For the sauce, pour 0.5 liters of beef stock and chill.

Make cheese sauce in broth

    Dissolve in a pan 2/3 (40 g) butter... Add flour and fry, stirring occasionally.

  • When the flour becomes golden, pour in the broth and pepper. Cook, stirring constantly, for 10 minutes. Fire is medium.
  • Add finely grated cheese, the remaining butter and egg yolk to the hot sauce. Mix well. Add salt if necessary. For beauty, you can add turmeric (it also ennobles the taste).

Serve meat with sauce to the table

  • Remove the beef from the broth. Cut across the fibers into slices. Drizzle with hot cheese sauce.

A plate of delicious beef food with cheese sauce and pasta and cherry tomato garnish.

If you plan to boil frozen beef, thaw the meat before boiling. You can do this at room temperature, it is even better to place a piece of beef on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator - then defrosting takes more time, but the meat retains taste qualities... If the piece to be defrosted is already unpacked, cover it with damp gauze or a clean towel to keep the top from winding.

If time pressure forces you to use a microwave oven, it is important to ensure that the defrosting is even - usually this happens when you try to defrost a piece that is too large, while the middle remains hard for a long time, and the edges are already starting to cook.

Rinse the meat in cool water, remove the veins and bones, remove the film. Your further actions will depend on the purpose of cooking the beef. If you want a tasty broth, put the meat in cold water and salt after boiling, but if you need soft, juicy meat, dip the beef in steep salted boiling water so that the juice does not have time to flow out.

The duration of cooking depends not only on the size of the piece, but also on the part of the beef carcass from which it is cut. The more load falls on the muscles of this part of the carcass, the tougher the meat will be, but its taste will be more pronounced - these parts include the brisket, thigh. Such pieces must be cooked after boiling water for at least two hours. The meat from the shoulder blade or rump is softer and more tender, but its taste can be bland. These parts of the carcass are cooked quickly - in about an hour and a half.

Pour water over the meat so that it completely covers the piece. It is better to choose a not very large saucepan - in a large number meat cooks faster with water, but its taste becomes slightly worse. Place a saucepan over medium heat and cover with a lid - this is necessary not only to reduce evaporation of water, but also in order to limit the access of oxygen, oxidizing fats and impairing the taste of the broth.

Once the water boils, skim off the foam, add salt and reduce heat. Cook the beef under the lid for one and a half to two hours, periodically checking the readiness of the meat with a knife - the easier the blade slides into the pulp, the higher the degree of cookiness.

About half an hour before the end of cooking, add the roots (parsley, parsnips) and spices (a few peas of black or allspice, bay leaf), you can also put a whole onion, peeled from the husk, into the broth. When the meat is ready, do not rush to remove it from the broth - remove the pan from the heat and leave for 10-15 minutes, without removing the lid, so that the beef is saturated with the broth and is juicier. After that, you can take out the meat and cut into portions, season the broth. Do not leave bay leaves and peppers in the finished broth - this will impair its taste.

The culinary task of how to cook beef seems to be very simple for many housewives. After all, what is difficult to throw meat into water, put it on the hob and wait for it to be ready? It turns out that you still need to try to cook beef.

Ingredients:

  • 1 kg of boneless beef;
  • 1.5 liters of water;
  • vegetables (onions, carrots, celery root, potatoes);
  • black peppercorns;
  • Bay leaf;
  • salt.

Preparation

Traditionally, there are two ways to cook beef such as: boil rich broth and cook the meat itself. In order to get a tasty broth, it is enough to place the meat in cold water and cook over high heat. Thanks to gradual heating, the meat releases soluble proteins and mineral salts into the water.

If the goal is to cook juicy meat, then it should be put in boiling water. In these two methods of preparation, the meat yield becomes less, because the beef gives the liquid to the broth. Meat should not be completely covered with water.

Cover the saucepan with a lid after the broth has boiled and turn the heat on. The broth should languish. Do not let the meat boil so the fat does not mix with the water and emulsify. Usually, when cooking meat, foam is removed, but this is not at all necessary. Foam is the protein that comes out of the meat into the water. It is not necessary to remove the foam, you can reduce nutritional value broth.

Cooking time depends on the age and obesity of the cow. Young meat is cooked for 40 - 60 minutes, and old meat is about 2 - 2, 5 hours. Checking the meat for readiness is very simple, just pierce the meat with a fork in a thick place. If you are putting old meat in a saucepan, add a spoonful of vinegar or a teaspoon there lemon juice... The meat will boil down faster. To soften hard beef, grate it on all sides overnight. mustard powder... Rinse it off in cold water the next morning and it will boil down easily.

The finished meat is punctured without hindrance and red juice does not flow out of the punctured place. Meat is salted in different ways. It depends on what you want to cook. If you decide to cook broth, add salt at the very beginning of cooking, and if you decide to cook meat, then 10 minutes before removing the pan from the heat. After cooking, you do not need to remove the lid, let the meat brew.

Beef is delicious and useful product... It is used to prepare savory meat dishes and salads. The aroma and taste of such food depends on how well the meat is cooked. How to cook beef for salad? This is one of the frequently asked questions. Indeed, not every chef manages to make this, one might say, the most important ingredient for a salad, soft and juicy.

A piece of fresh beef weighing five hundred grams is placed in a saucepan. To keep it soft, it is completely filled with very hot water, brought to a boil and the water is drained. After that, the meat is re-poured with boiling water and cooked for fifty minutes.

Five minutes before readiness, you need to salt, pepper and throw one or two bay leaves into it. Water must be taken with a reserve or cooked over low heat under a lid - it is categorically not recommended to add water instead of boiled water - the meat will immediately become tough and nothing can be fixed.

By the way, beef broth can be used to make soup. Then it is worth adding carrot roots, parsley, and other vegetables during cooking. To keep the meat juicy, it must be left in the broth until it cools and only then used for slicing into a salad.

If boiled meat you need to stand for a while, it is useful to sprinkle it with a small amount vegetable oil, or treat with mayonnaise, if it is in a salad. By the way, this way the meat will be additionally marinated and will be even softer and tastier.

How much to cook beef for salad in a slow cooker? Beef meat is cooked for one hour, setting the "Stew" mode.

How long does it take to cook beef in a double boiler? Just like in a slow cooker, beef is cooked for at least one hour.

How much to cook beef after defrosting? To make the meat juicy and tasty, first of all, it must be properly defrosted. A piece of frozen beef is placed on the lowest shelf of the refrigerator for seven to eight hours.

During this time, the meat will defrost. After that, it is washed under warm water. To make the meat juicy and soft, it is cooked whole, without dividing it into pieces.

The cooking time of this product for salad depends on its "age". If the meat is soft and easily pierced with a knife, then it has already been cooked.

Tricks for making beef soft

  • So that the meat is not tough, it is preliminarily rubbed with dry mustard on all sides and left overnight, and the next day it is cooked.
  • The meat should only be dipped in boiling water.
  • For 6 hours, you can pour a piece of meat with pomegranate juice.
  • An excellent option, how to make the beef for the salad soft and add an interesting taste, is to marinate in crushed kiwi flesh overnight.

How to cook soft beef step by step video recipe

We have also prepared a video for you for a complete understanding. step by step process cooking.