Cooking Tips for Beef Lovers

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Beef is one of the most delicious meats out there when cooked properly. If you’re buying a quality cut of beef, then you want to make sure you’re preparing and cooking it properly. This way, you’ll enhance the texture and flavor and make something wonderful.

When Harper was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes last February, we made several changes to our diet as a family. One of those changes was to incorporate more protein, specifically beef, into each of our meals. Since then, I've cooked different cuts of beef many different ways, and I've come up with a few helpful hints for getting it just right.

These cooking tips should give you some great ideas when it comes to what to do with your beef.


Sear Your Beef

You can do this with pretty much any beef recipe you can think of. Before adding your beef, sear it on both sides. This will add to the flavor of the dish and make your beef even tastier. You do this by getting a pan to a very high heat, then adding your beef for around 1 minute on each side. Before you add the beef, make sure you’ve brushed it with coconut or olive oil first. You may also like to season it. Don’t move the beef or be tempted to mess with it. You can then add it to your casserole, stew, or even continue cooking in the pan once you’ve seared it.

Get the Timings Right

Everybody knows that you can eat beef well done, rare, or somewhere in the middle. You should know your timings in order to cook the perfect piece of beef. For rare you’ll only need to do both sides for about 2 minutes, but for well done it could be up to 5 minutes each side depending on the size of your beef. It depends what dish you’re cooking too.

Buy The Right Kind for the Job

Different kinds of beef are suitable for different kinds of dishes. For example, a joint of beef is perfect for creating a roast beef dish, while chunks of beef are great for a casserole. The packaging will usually explain what the meat is good for, so pay attention to it.

Enhance the Flavor

Enhance the flavor of your beef by adding different ingredients to complement it. You may like to add sauces, herbs, spices, or all of them to see what you can create. Peppercorn sauce goes great with steak, for example.

Use Good Knives

If you aren’t using a good set of knives on your meat, or any of your food for that matter, you aren’t doing it justice. Make sure they are sharp enough, and that you aren’t having to hack away at your meat to use it. You should be able to slice through it with no problems. This will not only enhance the texture, but the presentation too.

Make Sure You Let it Rest

In most cases, the meat should be rested before you eat it so you can enjoy it properly. This gives it a chance to drop any juices it doesn’t want and soak back up the juices it does want. If you plop it straight on your plate, it might bleed on there and make your vegetables all gloopy. Yuk.

Now, go ahead and make the most of your beef!

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