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Methods of Cooking Meat
Methods of Cooking Meat
Baking or roasting in an oven is a dry heat method because it uses hot air to conduct
the heat. Pan-searing a steak is considered dry-heat cooking because the heat transfer
takes place through the hot metal of the pan.
Note: The browning of food (including the process by which meat is browned, called
the Maillard reaction) can only be achieved through dry-heat cooking. Examples of dry-
heat methods include:
Forms of dry-heat cooking that use hot, dry air to cook food roasting and
baking. Like other dry-heat cooking methods, roasting and baking brown the
surface of the food, which in turn develops complex flavors and aromas.
Both words describe a method of cooking an item by enveloping it in hot,
dry air, generally inside an oven and at temperatures of at least 300°F and often
much hotter. A convection oven, which circulates hot air throughout the oven, can
enhance the browning reaction.
Sautéing is a form of dry-heat cooking that uses a very hot pan and a small
amount of fat to cook the food very quickly. Like other dry-heat cooking methods,
sautéing browns the food's surface as it cooks and develops complex flavors and
aromas.
Sautéing requires a very hot pan.
When sautéing, it's important to heat the pan for a minute, then add a
small amount of fat and let it gets hot as well, before adding the food to the pan.
This hot fat helps brown the surface of the food. Another key is to avoid
overloading or overcrowding the pan.
Deep-Frying
Since deep-frying involves submerging food in hot, liquid fat, it might take
some time to get used to the idea that it's actually a form of dry-heat cooking.
But if you've ever seen the violent reaction of hot oil to even a tiny drop of
water, you know that oil and water are a couple of opposites that has nothing to
do with each other.
Simmering
With simmering, the cooking liquid is a bit hotter than poaching from 180°F to
205°F. Here we will see bubbles forming and gently rising to the surface of the water,
but the water still isn't at a full rolling boil.
Because it surrounds the food in water that maintains a more or less constant
temperature, simmering cooks food very evenly. It's an excellent choice for culinary
preparations including stocks or soups, starchy items such as potatoes or pastas, and
many others.
Boiling
The hottest of these three stages is boiling, where the water reaches its highest
possible temperature of 212°F. It's actually the least likely of the three to be used for
cooking. That's because the violent agitation caused by the rolling boil can be too rough
on food and will often damage it.
Water at a full boil would be a bad choice for cooking an egg outside its shell, as
we do when preparing poached eggs, because the agitation would cause the egg to fall
apart. The same holds true for delicate fish as well as some pastas.
Steaming
Though it can be done on the stovetop, braising is best done in the oven,
because the heat fully surrounds the pot and causes the food to cook more evenly than
if it were only heated from below.
Begin by Searing
Because moist heat does not permit the various browning reactions that dry heat
produces, giving cooked meats the brown, outer crust that also helps to develop
complex flavors and aromas, it's customary to sear meat in a pan with a small amount
of hot fat before braising it. This step helps to develop flavors as well as making the
meat more appealing visually. Read more about how to braise meat
How Braising Works
Braising is a good choice of cooking method for cuts of meat that are tougher or
from older animals. The connective tissues that are more prevalent in cuts like this, and
which can make meats tough and chewy when improperly cooked, are slowly dissolved
through long, slow application of moist heat. So you end up with a tender piece of meat.