When it comes to preparing and cooking meat, it may not be as quick or as simple as you want to believe. It is a delicate process and requires multiple different commercial-grade tools for preparing meat, to make it both safe and pleasurable to eat.

Take stock of what you have in your kitchen and ensure that you have the equipment necessary to get the most out of your meat, lest it goes to waste, either because of faulty prepping or bland taste.

Make Sure To Have a Good Tenderizer

The most common preparatory step when it comes to meat is to make sure that it is properly tenderized to prevent it from becoming overly chewy. Tenderizers come in all shapes, sizes, and varieties, making it something you can explore to find the proper technique for your cooking. A few of the more popular methods include:

Meat Mallet

A meat mallet is exactly what it sounds like—a specialized hammer that is used to break up the muscle fibers within meat. The mallet has two sides to it, one side that is rough and the other that is smooth. The smooth part is to flatten out meat if the surface is uneven or if you need your cut of meat to be a certain size. The side with the teeth is used for the purpose of tenderizing meat.

Caution With Meat Mallet

Exercise some restraint with a meat mallet until you become proficient with it. Too often, a piece of meat is pounded into mush because the chef became overzealous with the hammer. A rough piece of meat is nasty, but meat that has been turned into paste is just as bad. You need to find the right balance and know when to stop and when to keep going, and that may be something that comes with experience.

Electric Tenderizer

A commercial meat tenderizer that runs on electricity serves the same purpose as the mallet, but the process is fully automated. You do not have to use physical force to tenderize the meat, which can potentially tire you out before you are done cooking. This can be an easier and faster process than doing it by hand and lowers the risk of over-tenderizing your meat.

Boning Knife

Depending on which cut of meat you purchase, you may have an overabundance of bone. When you want to separate the bone from the meat, you will need a boning knife to get the job done. Whether you want to filet a piece of beef, lamb, fish, pork, or poultry—a boning knife is the tool that you will need to get the job done.

Be Careful of Substitutions

If you do not have a boning knife, you may be tempted to use what you have around the kitchen instead of going out and purchasing one. While specific knives can be used in place of a typical boning knife, using anything other than what is recommended can lead to meat being ruined or cuts not turning out how you wanted them. Be wary of what knives you are using, and always use the appropriate knife for the job.

Whetstone for Keeping Your Knives Sharp

Your knives will wear down gradually over time—there is no way around it; but the duller they become, the more difficult it will be to cut through meat properly. Cutting through a cut of steak with a dull knife will rip and tear the meat apart and significantly damage it, leaving it unsuitable for consumption.

It is far more economical to have a whetstone or honing steel to resharpen your knives; purchasing new blades every time the old ones are worn down is inconvenient and not financially reasonable.

What Dictates Knife Longevity?

If you are constantly cutting into bone, that contact with the sharp edge of your knife will become more worn down significantly faster. To combat degradation, whether it is slow or fast, it is recommended that you home your knives about every two weeks if they see constant use—The number of times you should sharpen your knives is reduced the less often you use them.

Cast Iron Pan

When you are cooking your meat, you are going to need a lot of heat. Cast iron pans can withstand the amount of heat the cooking steak calls for, while giving your cut of meat a good sear at the same time. The advantages of using cast iron also extend to the distribution of heat across the pan; there will not be any part that is any more or less cooked than another part.

Careful With Cleaning Your Pan

While it won’t hurt to clean your cast iron pot out with a little soap, you may want to hold off on giving it a thorough cleaning. Your pot has seasoning on it that adds flavor to your meat whenever you cook on it, and extensive cleaning will wash away all that potential flavor. Of course, the seasoning can always be added again later; it is recommended to leave as much of it on as you can.

Meat Thermometer

One of the most important tools for preparing meat, a meat thermometer is necessary to guarantee the safety of the food that you’re cooking. You cannot possibly know the internal temperature of the meat by touch, and the only reliable way to check if meat is cooked all the way through is to cut it open. While that is an acceptable way of checking, it can also let out the juices that give the meat its flavor.

Don’t Start Cooking Unprepared

Cooking doesn’t necessarily require you to have the right tools for the job, but those tools do make the process much easier on yourself. Whether you need to tenderize some beef, check the internal temperature before declaring a steak done, or having the right knives—these tools can make your meat turn out better than it has before. Invest in the right equipment, and you will see the difference in the quality of your food.