Marinate: Marinating your steak in acids or enzymes breaks down the fibers and tenderizes the steak. To marinate the meat in an acidic solution, add lemon juice, lime juice, apple cider vinegar, or buttermilk to your marinade and let the steak soak in it for thirty minutes to an hour, depending on the size of the cut.
Most fine restaurants age their beef to intensify the flavor and improve the tenderness of the cut. Wet aging is done by vacuum packing the meat and letting it age in its own juices. Wet aging is done by more than 90% of fine steakhouses.
To better understand this, let's look at the three main methods of tenderizing meat: mechanical, thermal, and enzymatic.
In Chinese cooking, proteins like beef, pork or chicken are velveted first before stir-frying them. There are several ways to velvet, but at its most basic level, it involves marinating meat with at least one ingredient that will make it alkaline. This is what tenderizes the meat, especially cheaper, tougher cuts.
Adding butter to steak adds extra richness and can also soften the charred exterior, making a steak more tender.
Whether hosting a holiday cookout, serving up some stir-fry or tackling game meats, baking soda is the go-to meat tenderizer to help make your steak, chicken or turkey silkier, juicier and yummier.
Cola's high acidity and caramel flavor makes a surprisingly good meat tenderizer. Cola typically has a pH of about 2.7—for comparison, lemon juice has a pH of 2—making it acidic enough to break down some proteins without dissolving your meat.
Briefly soaking meat in a solution of baking soda and water raises the pH on the meat's surface, making it more difficult for the proteins to bond excessively, which keeps the meat tender and moist when it's cooked.
When it comes to cooking tender steak, the seasoning matters! Salt tenderizes beef by drawing moisture out of it, then dissolving so it acts as a brine. We prefer sea salt over table salt for tenderizing, as it has the perfect texture and flavor for steak.
How to fix a chewy steak. If your steak is chewy due to undercooking, all you need to do is throw it back on the grill and allow it to reach an internal temperature of at least 145 degrees Fahrenheit (via Livestrong).
We recommend salting your steak approximately one hour before cooking it per inch of thickness. For example, if you were working with a steak that was 2-inches thick, then you would salt your steak 2 hours before cooking it. This will allow the excess moisture on the steak to seep out while it is sitting.
Personally, I prefer butter. It has a relatively low smoke point like olive oil but gives a lovely finish to the steak. It also provides a lovely shine and smells pretty good too. That's especially important if you're at home and are cooking for someone else!
Instructions: Place Beef Rib in a deep pan, wearing gloves coat the entire rib with butter, encasing the rib by pressing the butter forming a butter layer. Set in the refridgerator for 60 days. With a sharp butchers knife slice off a piece of butter aged steak.
Butter is ideal for continually basting a steak and lends itself perfectly to some cuts and for those who like to be there tenderly managing the cooking. Being there and continually basting means the butter is less likely to burn and mar the flavour.
This is how to tenderise beef with a Chinese restaurant method called “velveting beef”. Also used for chicken, it's a simple, highly effective technique using baking soda that transforms economical beef so it's incredibly tender in stir fries and stir fried noodles.
When meat (such as steaks and roasts) is mechanically tenderized, needles or blades pierce the meat to make it more tender and easier to chew. Meat suppliers and sellers, restaurants, and even home cooks do this. The needles or blades may also add flavour, like marinades.
The acetic acid in the vinegar breaks down meat fibers, making them more tender and flavorful.
Acidic ingredients in marinades like vinegar, wine and lemon juice will tenderise meat by denaturing or unwinding the long protein in the muscle. In fact, if you leave an acidic marinade on a piece of meat for a long time, it will eventually break down all the proteins – leaving behind a mushy mess.