An old wives tale states if you want to tenderise your meat, one of the best ways is to cook it with a metal spoon in the pot. Is this true?
Seeing as Hari Raya Aidilfitri is here and many will be cooking their rendang, we thought it would be a good idea to ask if this was true. Is it?As there are no official studies conducted on the efficacy of tenderising meat by soaking a spoon in the dish while you are cooking it, we cannot definitively say whether the method is effective or not.
The perimysium, along with other connective tissue that hold the bundles together and attach them to the animal's skeleton are made of a protein called collagen. There are a number of ways to do it, but here are the three we will be talking about today; 1) Seasoning and marinades 2) Mechanical tenderisation 3) How you cook the meat.
Finally, your choice of cooking method can also act as a tenderiser. Cooking meat at a low heat over a long span of time, such as when you make a rendang or stew, gelatinises the collagen.Overcooking a piece of meat at high temperature on the other hand will cause the collagen to constrict rather than gelatinise, thus making it tough.