Episode 6
In this chat with Rachelle, we’re diving into:
Rachelle’s journey from veganism to eating (and cooking!) meat
The most important first step when cooking any piece of meat
What to use to bring out the best flavour in your meat
Introduction
Hello and welcome to episode six of the Beyond Nourished Podcast. Here, you will learn short tips and tricks to become a better, more efficient health-focused cook.
I'm your host Rachelle Girardin. I'm the creator of the Holistic Chef Certification and Business Training, a holistic nutritionist, and I've been running my own business, Beyond Nourished since 2012.
Today's episode is actually part one of a three-part series on how to cook mouth-watering meat. Just a little side note before we get started - the information in this episode will pertain to cooking your fish as well!
Keeping it Simple
When I started to plan this episode, I got into the minutia of - okay, how can I get these people to cook the most insane piece of meat they’ve ever cooked in their lives?
I did a bunch of research around the small intricacies of what we needed to do, and then stopped for a moment and I realized, number one, even though I haven't been cooking meat for that long, I have seen my meat cooking abilities improve vastly.
And so while I could get into some of the finer details of things, I want to keep this a bit more on a macro level because most people aren't necessarily looking to make that perfect steak (which I could go into so many details about).
No, most people are looking to up-level their general meat game in terms of really basic tips - making sure that whether they're cooking fish or chicken or pork or ground meat - whatever it is - they know exactly what to do to cook it to perfection. So that's what I'm going to concentrate on today.
From Veganism to Eating (and Cooking!) Meat
You may be surprised by the fact that I just said that I haven't been cooking meat for that long - well it’s true! A bit of a back story into that is I actually got into the world of nutrition through yoga. I did my first teacher training in 2007 after a class with my beloved teacher Ryan Leier from One Yoga. And a lot of the yoga traditions are based on vegetarianism, which actually led me to veganism. That was also when I started to go to nutrition school. I was working at Organic Lives and my life was extremely influenced by the vegan style of eating.
It wasn't until about two years into my vegan journey that I was introduced to another type of eating, which is called The Bulletproof Diet. For those who don’t know anything about it, it's basically on the other end of the veganism spectrum. I started to introduce meat back into my diet because at the time I was not feeling very well. I was constantly overeating, feeling unsatisfied, and I knew that I needed to do something different. For me, that actually meant introducing meat back into my diet!
At this point, I was still cooking for people, but I refused to look for clients who wanted to include meat in their menu. I just had no experience, and when I learned how to cook, it was truly around vegetarian and vegan food.
So here I am years later, where my predominant client has been an extreme meat eater, and I have keto clients that I cook for on a regular basis, so a lot of meat has entered my life and I've had to really get focused on how to make sure that my food now tastes just as good as my vegetarian food!
The First Step to Cooking any Piece of Meat
You might think that I'm going to be talking mostly about how you want to let your meat come to room temperature. Many people have heard this before, where there's a theory around if you bring your meats to room temperature or at least temper down a little when they come out from the fridge, that you will be rewarded with a juicer and much more succulent piece of meat. But after reading The Food Lab by J Kenzi Lopez Alt and doing this little bit of experimentation myself, I was quick to realize that this is actually just an unnecessary step.
I do use this technique in a lot of ways and a lot of times, but it's for a different reason. I actually do that so that it speeds up the cooking process, not necessarily because I feel like the end product is that much better. So that is something you can keep in mind, but considering that the title of this episode is How to Cook Mouth-Watering Meat, I want to stay focused on the bigger picture: making sure that we season our meat, fish or poultry much better than we currently have been if we’re finding that it's not being brought to life in the cooking process.
What that means is making sure that all the sides of whatever you're cooking animal protein-wise are being covered with a thin layer of salt before you cook. You want to do this from an efficiency standpoint, right before you're cooking, so literally, right before the meat goes into the dish or the fish goes into the pan - you want to season it right before that stage.
You want to make sure that you do it just before cooking. There is a little bit more to be said about this around doing it longer than that, but we're gonna stay away from that for the time being because I know a lot of the people that are listening to this podcast are looking for quick and efficient ways to improve their cooking - and don't necessarily have a whole day to essentially salt the meat ahead of time!
Key Takeaways
Let’s keep this first step super simple and just remember to season all sides of the meat before it goes into the dish with good, high-quality salt - whether that be rock salt or pink salt.
This in itself is going to up-level your dish, especially if you're even just used to putting your meat in the pot or on whatever cook surface, and then just lightly sprinkling a little bit of salt on top, hoping that would do the trick.
Instead, I want you to really think about what adheres to the outer layer of the animal protein - that's really going to be what infuses flavour into each bite, so consider that with salt, and then also you can consider that with a lot of your spices as well. Not so much with herbs, but definitely with your spices!
So that’s it, I’ll keep this first step super simple: make sure that you're consistent with salting your meats, your poultry and your fish throughout the dish, but especially at that important beginning step!
I hope that you've enjoyed today's podcast and as always, it would be a great help if you could share/rate/review/subscribe - anything to help us get the word out about these short little quick bites of nutrition and healthy cooking tips and tricks!
I hope that I see you guys in the next episode for step two of how to cook mouth-watering meat.