4 Tips to Cook Meat Like a Pro

cook

Many people throughout the world are enjoying a well-cooked, delicious steak. Whether it’s a dry aged wagyu or a pan-made steak, it doesn’t matter. If you’re good at cooking, you’ll be able to prepare and cook a great piece of meat for sure. But, if you’re just starting out, and you’ve never done more than the occasional at-home cooking, you’d definitely want to up your skills and find those hidden, chef-only secrets to cooking a great stake.

And you don’t have to search any further. We’ve gathered all our know-how and secrets to cooking the perfect meat and compiled them in the article below.

From seasoning a stake properly to going through the process of resting the meat in order to preserve all the meat juices and keep the flavors. So, let’s get this thing started from the beginning.

fall scents for your home

The ingredients you are going to use are far more critical than you think.

If there’s one thing that’s just as important as the type of meat you’re going to use, it’s the ingredients that you’re using. Use the wrong seasoning, and it’s a surefire way to make any meat you cook taste worse.

If you want to go the chef way, it’s best to go with kosher salt. Compared to regular grain salt, there’s a difference in the amount of sodium contained.

And the secret to salting and preparing meat is to use salt generously. While many people go with the safer less salt while they’re cooking, using salt liberally in your cooking will make the flavors of the meat much more pronounced.

But while salting is essential, black pepper is also essential. And while it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, seasoning it properly will make things much, much better. If you enjoy the spiciness of black pepper, then season the steak just before you serve it. This will retain the sharp spiciness of the seasoning. 

If you like things a bit more toned down, then season before searing the meat, or before cooking in the oven. This will make the black pepper smoother in taste, removing its spike of spiciness that’s signature to it.

Your meat preparation process is essential, especially when you want to cook a steak properly.

While there are numerous ways to prepare the meat before cooking it, some of the more popular ones are dry aging and simply resting the meat before cooking it.

We’ll take a look at the latter, as it’s much easier to prepare and do quickly at home (dry aging can take up to a month for the meat to age properly).

The first rule of meat preparation, before you even season it, is to wash it underwater and let it rest until it has room temperature. And here’s where a lot of people make a mistake. In order to cook a tender stake, leave your meat to rest at room temperature for thirty to forty-five minutes. 

After that, you’re free to season and cook the meat as you see fit. 

Basting is the thing that makes the difference between good and great steaks.

The secret touch of every professional cook is to baste the steak before they take it out of the heat. 

Basting is done with a bit of butter and your favorite aromatic herbs. Three to four minutes before the steak is fully ready, add enough butter to melt in a way that allows you to scoop it with a spoon. Constantly spoon the melted butter over the spoon. This will enable it to cook evenly and not burn. 

A telltale sign that the heat is too high is when the butter stops foaming. That means it’s burning. If there’s no foam in your pan, take the pan away from the heat. 

After all this cooking, a steak needs to rest before eating.

Cooking is a pretty invasive thing to do to meat. It let’s all the juices away from the beef, and great cooks know that that’s precisely where the great taste of meat comes from. You’d want the meat to absorb back all the flavors and juices it has let out during the cooking process. 

Take it out of the pan, tent it with foil and let it cool and rest for five minutes before cutting and serving. This would make all the lost juices flow back into the meat, unleashing all its flavors once you start consuming it. 

Cooking meat is a laborious process. It requires your full attention in order to make a delicious dinner. And the trick is to always do the little details in order to make the flavors pop.

LivingBetter50 is a magazine for women over 50, offering an over 50 magazine free download for women with spirit

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

4 Tips to Cook Meat Like a Pro
Scroll to Top