Tenderizing meat is a popular method of preparing protein for consumption, no matter what meal you’re making. The reason people tenderize meat goes beyond the recipe book—this method of preparing meat will help you to grow, learn, and cultivate your culinary skills.

Practicing traditional cooking helps us understand the purpose of tenderizing meat and how it contributes to a delicious meal. In this article, you’ll learn how to tenderize meat and why it’s important to do so. That way, you will always know how to prepare a great, meat-filled meal for your family and friends wherever you go.

How To Tenderize Meat

Throughout history, people have used several methods of tenderizing meat, allowing them to create specialty dishes with the tender cuts. The traditional method of tenderizing meat is to pound your cut evenly with a metal or wooden mallet.

The act of pounding the meat loosens its fibers and helps break them down by hitting them until they are soft. Another unique method of tenderizing meat is scoring it. You can score meat with a few methods, including cutting it and using machinery.

If you choose to score your meat by hand, you’ll need to be as precise with your cuts as possible to make your lines cross the meat evenly. Then, you can score those lines perpendicular to help ensure maximum tenderization.

Automated and Chemical Methods of Tenderizing

If you’re running your meat through a professional meat tenderizer, then the machine does all the work for you. You will be able to judge how many times to tenderize the cut by how it feels in your hand after every pass. For instance, with flank steak or sirloin, you’ll generally only want to pass it through two or three times, and you’ll have an evenly tenderized piece of meat.

You can also tenderize your meat using a chemical process. Either prepare a marinade or let it soak—these methods will give you a tender and flavorful cut of meat. Alternatively, you can sprinkle or rub your meat with a powdered meat tenderizer, which you can find at most markets and grocery stores.

If you prefer to tenderize your meat the old-fashioned way, you can use salt. But before you use that method, you should keep a few things in mind. For example, if you’re going to use salt, you should use guidelines for nutrition so that you don’t oversalt your meat.

When you use salt, you will essentially be brining your meat, so understand how salt affects your meat before applying it. If you salt your meat dry, you will tenderize it, but it will also dry out the meat if you leave it on for too long.

To tenderize your meat with salt, you’ll need to create a wet brine, where you salt some water and put your meat in it. The salt will mix with the water, and the meat will need to brine in the saltwater mixture for no less than 10 minutes but ideally around 30 minutes.

Soaking in the saltwater mixture will allow the meat to absorb the maximum amount of water because the salt opens up the meat’s pores. Then, you will have an incredibly tender cut of meat, and the salt will give it a good flavor.

Why We Tenderize Our Meat

There has always been debate over whether tenderizing is necessary, and this is an open-ended question. For some meats, it really isn’t necessary since they are already tender, whereas, for others, it’s absolutely required if you want to consume them safely and without difficulty.

Most foods have a level of rigidity and are soft enough that we can consume them without hurting ourselves in the process. But some foods, such as uncooked vegetables and other fibrous foods, must be consumed very carefully to avoid difficulty chewing or worse.

But for meat, it all comes down to its density and the amount of muscle fiber, cartilage, and collagen that are in the cut of meat.

For example, fish is not very dense, so if you’re cooking fish, tenderizing it is not a requirement. Similarly, some other cuts of meat, like most kinds of poultry, don’t have high density and are relatively tender. But with many game meats like venison and elk, you will need to know how to tenderize it for the meat to be palatable and enjoyable.

Benefits of Tenderizing

You can prepare an incredible steak from virtually any cut if you have the right tools and skill set. Tenderizing meat allows us to eat more kinds than we would be able to otherwise. Since you can tenderize tough cuts of meat that are generally not as popular, you can try out these cuts and shop for them while at the market.

Another huge benefit of tenderizing your meat is that it helps the meat absorb marinades and seasonings better. Soaking the meat in a marinade opens up its pores, so it will take in much more flavoring from the mixture and the seasoning than it would otherwise. Finally, tenderized meat is much easier on the digestive system, so eating this type of meat is better for your health.

Though tenderizing meat can sound complicated, it’s not hard if you know the right methods to try. The type of meat you’re making, how it is traditionally prepared, and your preferences will all determine what methods you use for tenderizing your cuts of meat.

While people don’t always tenderize their meat, the practice comes in handy for a variety of recipes. So it’s a good idea to at least know how to tenderize the meat and why to do so. If you don’t perfect the skill right away, don’t worry! Once you learn how, it’s not hard, and practicing the skill will help you to significantly improve your cooking. If one method of tenderization isn’t working for you, try another—certain techniques are better than others for certain recipes. Next time you have to cook meat, try tenderizing it and see what you think!