Episode 8
In this chat with Rachelle, we’re diving into:
The third step in the three-part formula for cooking meat
Why it’s important to let your meat rest
A recap of all three tips for cooking mouth-watering meat
Introduction
Hi there, and welcome to Episode 8 of the Beyond Nourished Podcast. This is the place where you
can learn to become a better, more efficient health-focused cook in just 10 minutes or less.
I am your host, Rachelle Girardin. I am a certified nutritional practitioner, the founder of Beyond Nourished, and I have been actively working as a holistic chef for the last 10 years. A large part of those 10 years have been spent cooking meat for clients, so this is a topic I know a little something about.
As I mentioned a couple of episodes ago, my journey into cooking actually was through cooking vegetarian and vegan food, so I’ve really had to teach myself how to cook meat and really up-level that part of my cooking repertoire. These tips are incredibly important to implement and they really are something that will pertain to any type of animal protein that you are cooking.
Completing the Formula
In today’s episode, you are going to be learning the third and final step of what I believe to be the complete formula for making sure that you can cook yourself some delicious mouth-watering meat!
The third and final step is one that you’ve probably heard of before, but might not be one that you always have time for or one that you don’t necessarily always prioritize implementing. The tip is to let your food rest - meaning you let your meat proteins rest before you eat them.
What this means from a grilling standpoint is, let’s say you’ve cooked a steak or you’ve seared a chicken breast - what you need to do is let that piece of protein sit for at least five, I wanna say even 10 minutes before you start to eat it.
Why You Want to Let Meat Rest
The reason for this is because as the meat is left to rest, what essentially happens is that the constricted muscle fibres (the fibres constrict when you start cooking them) begin to relax and the pressure on the juices is slowly released. This gives the juices a chance to be able to redistribute to the edges and cross onto the outer side. By doing this, you’re able to achieve a much more moist and flavorful piece of meat.
Now, I get that we don’t always have the time for doing this, but letting it rest also pertains to when you’re cooking a one-pot dish in terms of cooking something like ground meat on the stovetop - let those dishes really come together over the cooking process and slightly after, so that the flavours all come together. You can’t expect to be able to bring a one-pot dish together in 10 minutes and expect those flavours to just all melt and come together - you need a little bit of time in order for all of those flavours to essentially be at their best.
So when you have the time, try to always prioritize having the time to ensure that your meat experience is of the utmost by giving your dishes time to rest!
That concludes my third and final tip for making mouth-watering meat. There will be way more on this topic in episodes to come, but these three actionable, implementable tips will really help to make your meat cooking a lot more consistent as well.
Let’s recap the three steps:
We are making sure that we are salting our animal proteins before we start cooking them, and then just right before we’re about to cook, evenly putting a little layer around each side that we will be cooking.
We want to be using a digital thermometer to make sure that we are bringing the food to the perfect temperature, not undercooking, and by no means over-cooking. Something to remember with step two is when you are cooking any type of animal protein, when you take it off of the grill or take it out of the air fryer, remember that it is going to continue to cook slightly after you bring it out. So whatever temperature that it might be at in the oven or wherever you’re cooking it, remember that it’s going to continue to cook a little bit once you get it out of the hot cook surface, so err on the side of caution with this second step. And remember, you don’t need to be a cooking genius or have gone to culinary school in order to use that digital thermometer properly! Have a printout on your fridge or somewhere nearby of the temperature ranges you want to cook those particular pieces of meat, poultry, or seafood because it is different for every single one of those categories.
The final step for cooking mouth-watering meat is just making sure you have a little bit of time to let the grilled animal proteins rest or time to allow those one-pot dishes just a little bit of time for their flavours to come together and melt together.
I hope you’ve enjoyed not only this tip, but the two before as well in this three-part series of cooking mouth-watering meat!
If you feel that somebody could benefit from this and really come alive in their cooking ability with these types of tips and tricks, please share this podcast with them.
If you’d like to connect with us on social media, please do that as well. You can find us at @cookwithbeyondnourished.
Thank you guys for tuning in. We’ll see you in the next episode!