Hi Tom, thanks for the question
I note that you said
prior to being cooked. Here are some methods I have tried (by no means an exhaustive list):
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pre-salting (effectively a dry brine). The theory here with beef is the same as it is with chicken - the salt diffuses into the meat. Proteins in the meat retain their 3D structure by means of electrical charge - if you alter the charge, the proteins unravel producing a more tender result. What's more - the salt in the meat actually helps hold on to moisture, so there is less moisture loss during cooking. There are some sites which enthusiastically promote this - here is
an example. However, I am not the only one to notice that this method does not seem to work as well with beef as it does with chicken - see
this entry in the International Culinary Center's blog. I get the same result - pre-salted meat takes on a cured flavour and texture. If you attempt to sous-vide the meat it is even worse - for some reason, pre-salted beef gives up a LOT of moisture in the SV bag. My recommendation: salt at the last minute before cooking, with more salt after carving.
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Jaccard meat tenderizer. (
Link). This contraption (pictured above) holds an array of angled knives that cuts some muscle fibres and leaving others alone when you push it through your steak. How does it work? All of us have seen what happens when we expose meat to heat - it contracts. The amount of contraction depends on the length of the muscle fibre. The more the meat contracts, the more juices will be squeezed out, and the denser the texture of the meat. The Jaccard tenderizes meat by chopping the long muscle fibres into shorter ones, lessening the contraction and keeping the meat juicy. This is conceptually similar to pounding the meat with a mallet, but I do not like doing that because non-even pounding can turn part of the meat into mush.
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Enzyme meat tenderizers (e.g. papaya or pineapple juice) are sometimes used but I do not like them. They work by digesting the proteins of the meat. Unfortunately, they work in an indiscriminate fashion and make the texture of the meat mealy.
Ultimately the best way to get a great steak on the plate is to buy a great steak from the butcher in the first place. Here are some observations on steaks from butchers:
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marbling - everybody agrees that more marbling = more flavour and more tenderness. Unless you are on a health drive, go for the steak which has the best marbling. I don't eat steak too often (less than once a month) so I don't worry too much if it has some fat in it. A bit of fat is OK on occasion, just don't make a habit of it.
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grass fed vs. feedlot. Grass fed means that the cows were allowed to roam and graze, meaning they got more exercise. More exercise means more flavour. Unfortunately, it
sometimes means less marbling - but marbling depends on other factors as well, e.g. the type of feed and the breed of cow.
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Slaughter - it has been proven that quick, humane slaughter produces superior meat to other forms of slaughter (e.g. halal and kosher methods). Both halal and kosher slaughter may not involve stunning the animal prior to the neck arteries being severed, so there is a greater risk of suffering to the animal, irrespective of what their clerics may tell you. The reason why quick slaughter produces superior meat - when an animal is panicked, it increases blood supply to the muscles and tells the muscles to use energy (in the form of ATP) in preparation of the "fight or flight" response. When the animal is slaughtered, the depleted energy supply causes rigor mortis to occur earlier and produces a more rigid form of rigor mortis, such that muscle fibres might be torn. The residual lactic acid also has deleterious effects on meat quality. All butchers will tell you that their meat was humanely slaughtered, but you want to make sure you do not buy halal or kosher meat. Unless you have to.
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Aging. It is essential for beef cuts to be aged, so that they go past rigor mortis and start becoming tender. There are two ways to age meat - in a vacuum bag (cryovac) or dry aging in a humidity and temperature controlled cellar. The advantage of Cryovac is that there is minimum moisture loss, so the meat is heavier and can be sold with more profits. Dry aging actually dries out the surface of the meat, which needs to be cut off and discarded producing more wastage - so the meat is more expensive to sell. But the results are well worth it - see
this article.
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Cut. Different cuts of meat produce different results, but that is the subject of another topic.
