they cook quickly, and suffer more from overcooking Grilled chops and steaks may be just right at the center but dry elsewhere; long-braised pot roasts and stews are often dry throughout The cook’s margin of error in cooking meat is narrower than it used to be So it’s more useful than ever to understand how the various methods for cooking meat work, and how best to apply them to the meat of the 21st century Modifying Texture Before and After Cooking There are a number of traditional techniques that tenderize tough meat before cooking, so that the cooking itself, and the drying of the muscle fibers, can be minimized The most straightforward of these is to damage the meat structure physically, to fragment the muscle fibers and connective-tissue sheets by pounding, cutting, or grinding Pieces of veal pounded into sheets (escalopes, scallopini) are both tenderized and made so thin that they cook through in a moisture-sparing minute or two Grinding the meat into small pieces creates an entirely different sort of texture: the gently gathered ground beef in a good hamburger has a delicate quality quite unlike even a tender steak A traditional and labor-intensive French method for modifying tough meat is larding, the insertion of slivers of pork fat into the meat by means of hollow needles In addition to augmenting the meat’s fat content, larding also breaks some fibers and connective-tissue sheets Marinades Marinades are acidic liquids, originally vinegar and now including such ingredients as wine, fruit juices, buttermilk, and yogurt, in which the cook immerses meat for hours to days before cooking They have ... method for modifying tough meat is larding, the insertion of slivers of pork fat into the meat by means of hollow needles In addition to augmenting the meat’s fat content, larding also breaks some fibers and connective-tissue... creates an entirely different sort of texture: the gently gathered ground beef in a good hamburger has a delicate quality quite unlike even a tender steak A traditional and labor-intensive French method for modifying tough meat is larding,...pounding, cutting, or grinding Pieces of veal pounded into sheets (escalopes, scallopini) are both tenderized and made so thin that they cook through in a moisture-sparing minute or two Grinding the meat into small pieces