How many of your recipes see you serving meat? How often do you really give meat the extra ‘oomph’ it needs to actually earn its place on the plate? If you are a little tired of meat-based dishes at all times tasting the same, then that’s a good sign that you need to invest some time in the seasoning game. Here, we’ll look at a few different techniques and tips for seasoning your meat, and how you can make sure the flavor in your kitchen never wanes.
Start with the basics
If you want improve your cooking skills, then the very first thing you must get used to is how you add the salt and pepper. Those are basic flavors, but when done well, they can make so much more out of your meal than you might think. With salt, you can increase the spread by using kosher salt, which offers thicker flakes than table salt, meaning it is easier to spread by hand. You want to ensure that you dry the meat with light strokes of a paper towel, then gently and evenly sprinkle your marinade over the surface. For the pepper, try grinding fresh pepper over the meat right before you slice it, rather than using ground pepper. These tips alone can greatly improve your taste. It’s also important to use a light touch with the salt. ‘Too salty’ is a quite common refrain and it is easy to exaggerate food to suit individual tastes.
Shake and bake
Being careful with your spices doesn’t suggest you should at all times touch them lightly. Many people use sauces for added flavor, but if you do not want to change the texture of your food to that degree, otherwise you want a less involved way of cooking the spices into the meat, then options like this homemade pork shake and roast recipe here maybe just what you need. The right combination of oils, spices, and breadcrumbs lets you create deliciously tasting layers that add a little bit of bite when seasoning and let the flavors sink into the meat at the same time, and you haven’t got to worry too much about precision. because coatings use quite liberal steps all mixed together.
Make marinade
Of course, there are other ways to bring flavor to your food besides using a shake and bake. One way to do this is to soak them in a marinade. There are many great recipe for condiments you can find online, but generally involve a combination of oil, vinegar, and herbs and spices of your choice. By letting the meat soak in the marinade before cooking it, you are allowing it to absorb the flavors. It helps even more if you make holes in the meat with a sharp knife. Pork and beef take longer to marinate than chicken and fish as a result of their density, so keep that in mind.
Get to know your herbs
Of course, whether you are making shakes and bakes, marinades, rubs, or other types of flavoring, you want to learn precisely what your ingredients are doing to the taste of your food. For that, you should spend some time getting to know the flavors of the various ingredients, in addition to what flavors complement them and which meats pair best with them. There are many online guide which can help you find a few pairs to try but your best bet is to jump right in, using a little at first to get a feel for the various ingredients’ effects for yourself and build that knowledge base so you can use them more organically in your cooking.
Smoking with a difference
If you’re looking to grill or broil meat then probably the greatest ways to enhance the taste is to check out some of the various cooking wood chips you can get your hands on. These chips are flavored and the smoke really helps pass it on to the meat you are making. Even if it is not seasoned, experimenting with different woods, such as oak or cherry can leave a different taste in the meat itself.
Marinating meat must be done with care and with intent. Of course, if you make a mistake here and there, it never hurts to learn from it. Hopefully the tips above can get you off to the right path.
