How we missed the barbecue picnics! But for a meal in nature to be a success, you first need to choose the right meat. We figure out what every hostess must know about him.
However, these tips, which we took from the book “Secrets of an Experienced Hostess” (publishing house “ABS”, 1998), will be useful not only for those who are going to go on these long May weekend for barbecue, but will be useful for any housewife who has decided visit the market to find fresh meat and make something tasty from it for the whole family.
1. The meat can be steamed, cooled, chilled and frozen. Steam, obtained immediately after cutting the carcass, is unsuitable for food: after cooking, it is very tough, tasteless and gives a cloudy broth. Meat that has cooled to room temperature is eaten, and for this you need to wait about a day.
2. Chilled and frozen meat must be stored properly. When thawing frozen meat, we recommend the following: thaw gradually at room temperature; you cannot dip frozen meat in warm water.
3. The surface of the carcass of good meat (beef) is covered with a dry crust. Fresh meat is almost dry when cut; if you touch the incision surface with your finger, it hardly gets wet. The hole formed in fresh meat when pressed with a finger quickly levels out, the fat is dry, crumbles when crushed, does not stick to the fingers; the bone marrow at the fracture is shiny and fills the entire lumen of the bone.
4. Stale meat has an unpleasant odor and a darker color, the pits are slowly leveled from pressure by a finger, while the finger becomes wet, the fat is grayish, smears, sticks to the fingers.
5. The quality of frozen meat is easier to determine after thawing. However, it should be taken into account that during thawing, the surface becomes wet and its elasticity decreases. Therefore, moisturizing the finger and the slow alignment of the fossa from pressing such meat cannot be considered a sign of its poor quality.
6. To test the freshness of the meat, you can boil a small piece in a mug. If the meat is stale, the broth will have an unpleasant odor and small drops of fat will float on its surface. The broth from fresh meat has a pleasant smell, large drops of fat float on its surface.
7. From 1 kg of raw meat without bones, you get about 600 g of boiled or 650 g of fried.
8. The meat of young animals is used for cooking fried dishes, and old ones for cooking and stewing.
9. The meat remains fresh for 4-5 days, if, after drying it, put it in a pan (enameled), pour it with kefir, cover with a plate on top, press down with a load and put it in a cool place.
10. Do not touch other foods until you have washed your hands with raw meat.
11. To make slicing the meat easier, place it in the freezer for a few minutes.
12. The meat should be beaten on a board previously moistened with water.
13. When frying, the oil sprinkles less if you sprinkle a little salt on the pan. You need to fry the meat only in hot oil, otherwise a crispy crust will not form and the meat will lose its taste.
14. It is recommended to cook old meat by adding a teaspoon of vinegar, it will become tastier and cook faster. You can also rub the meat with mustard and let it sit for 3-4 hours. Then rinse and cook.
15. When frying, pieces of meat should not be stacked closely to each other, since in this case a crust does not form for a long time and juice is abundantly released. Another secret. In all cookbooks, you will find advice to dry the meat with a napkin before frying. Unfortunately, housewives often neglect it, not understanding its meaning. And the fact is that the moisture remaining on the surface of the piece after you washed it gets into the pan, mixes with the oil and sharply reduces the processing temperature – no baking occurs, the juice flows freely from the piece, the meat is no longer fried, but rather boiled or stewed at best.
16. Raw meat should not be salted before cooking. Salt causes premature separation of the juice, which reduces the nutritional and palatability of the meat.
17. Pieces of boiled meat should be stored in a decoction with a lid on the dishes.
18. When meat is cooked, a gray foam accumulates on the surface of the broth. Most often it is removed with a spoon and thrown away. But these are valuable meat proteins curdled during cooking.
19. If you salt the water in which the meat is cooked, not immediately, but only after boiling, then the amount of foam will greatly decrease.
20. Unlike some dishes of beef (roast beef, steak, steak) and lamb (back of the knife, natural cutlets), veal and pork are never made semi-fried.
21. The readiness of the meat can be determined by piercing it in the thickest place with a sharp knife or a chef’s needle. If clear juice is released, the meat is done.
22. Meat for storage must not be washed, otherwise it will spoil quickly.
23. It is imperative to use thawed meat; it is not recommended to put it back in the refrigerator.
24. To make the cutlets tasty, add salt, black pepper, parsley, finely chopped onions, a tablespoon of sour milk (yogurt) to the meat cranked in a meat grinder, and crushed crackers instead of bread. Minced meat can be left in the refrigerator overnight.
25. In meat patties, you can put lightly fried onions and grated raw potatoes along with bread. But it is not recommended to add egg white, since when frying it quickly curdles, the meat shrinks, releases a large amount of juice, and the cutlets are dry.
26. If you prefer burgers with a crispy brown crust, you do not need to cover the pan with a lid. And if you are going to season the cutlets with any sauce or pour sour cream, let it boil, then, covering the pan with a lid, reduce the heat and simmer a little over low heat.
27. When frying schnitzel or chops, remove all veins first. When frying, the veins curl up and make the meat shapeless.
28. Do not forget to traditionally put a bean, a bean or a peeled nut in cabbage or minced meat for pies – that will be joy for the one who gets them, because it is believed that this is fortunate!
29. Chops that you intend to grill the next day, beat off with a damp wooden mallet, salt and pepper, cover each cutlet with chopped onion slices and refrigerate. You can fry them with or without onions. In this way, meat is also prepared for barbecue.
30. For smoking meat and meat products, try to use wood and sawdust of hardwood oak, beech, birch, alder, peeled from bark. Smoked products of excellent quality are obtained by using the wood of dried fruit trees (apple, cherry, apricot, etc.). To get especially aromatic smoked products, add juniper with berries, pine needles and cones, fragrant herbs (sage, mint, thyme, etc.) to the burning firewood.