10 Natural Beef Tenderisers - Carina North Quality Meats (2024)

FAQs

What is a good natural meat tenderizer? ›

In addition to acid-based foods, plant enzymes in fruits like pineapple and kiwi can tenderize meat. Like with lemon juice or vinegar, you don't want to leave these foods on beef for too long—it will make the meat soft. You can blend fruit to create a marinade.

Whether hosting a holiday cookout, serving up some stir-fry or tackling game meats, baking soda is the go-to meat tenderizer to help make your steak, chicken or turkey silkier, juicier and yummier.

Less than a teaspoon of baking soda ensures that your steak remains juicy and tender—even after a speedy marinade. While other recipes demand hours of marinating, this baking soda hack makes a flank steak or any other fibrous cut of beef ready to sear after just an hour.

How does Texas Roadhouse tenderise their steaks? Season each side of the steak well with the seasoning and set aside to rest for about 40 minutes. This causes the salt to infiltrate the surface (through osmosis) and actually aids in the breakdown of muscle fibres, resulting in more tender meat.

Kaitlin Leung of The Woks of Life, a blog dedicated to Chinese cooking, shares that a standard velveting mixture could include egg white and cornstarch, plus a few tablespoons of water – to help coat the meat yes, but also to make the meat extra tender and juicy.

Test Kitchen Tip. For proteins with an ample amount of exposed surface area, there's no need to allow it to soak for more than 15 minutes when using baking soda to tenderize meat. In fact, over-soaking can yield mushy meat.

You can mix the baking soda in with other marinade ingredients for flavor, or use it by itself simply to tenderize tough cuts of meat. The baking soda raises the pH level of the outside of the meat, discouraging the proteins from bonding together and thus making the tough meat tender and easier to chew!

The longer it sits, the more tender it will be. However, if you velvet for longer than an hour, the meat will become too soft—more akin to goo than a tender cut of protein. Rinse well before cooking: After velveting the meat, you have the option to rinse off the baking soda or slurry to prevent clumps in your stir-fry.

Make a marinade with acidic components—such as citrus juice, buttermilk, yogurt, wine, vinegar or soda—to help break down tough connective tissue and muscle fibers.

How do steakhouses tenderize steak? ›

A good restaurant starts with good steak, which is made tender by a combination of very high fat content to start with, and long aging to allow the proteins to break down throughout (rather than the surface mush you get from enzymes and marinades). The very best results come from dry aging, for as long as a month.

Cola's high acidity and caramel flavor makes a surprisingly good meat tenderizer.

How to Make It. Just add 1 to 2 tablespoons of white vinegar to your cooking liquids and your roasts, stew meats, and steaks will come out tender and juicy every time. Another option is to pierce your meat all over with a fork and then soak it in vinegar for 1 to 2 hours before you cook it.

Ginger is another common household ingredient that can tenderize meat. Simply add slices of ginger or ginger pulp to the surface of the meat and refrigerate for a minimum of 2 hours. The natural enzymes present in ginger will work their magic and give you a tender and flavorful result.

Force: Pounding, Massaging, Cutting, and More

Mallets and meat pounders, for example, can be used to hammer steaks and thin slices of meat; the heavy force from banging the meat breaks up the connective tissue and collagen around the muscle fibers, causing the muscle fibers to separate and the meat to be more tender.