Well-done but fork-tender?
I’m home for the holidays in St. Louis, it’s frickin’ cold, and that means it’s time for rich comfort food!
The first thing you should know: short ribs are one of my greatest weaknesses. So I picked some up, and as I looked around for new braising ideas, I started wondering why braises are ever tender given that we’re cooking them at a simmer—or even a boil! Order a well-done steak, and that’ll be inedibly tough at a mere 160°.
Thankfully, Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking
- Under 120°: water’s inside muscle cells. The meat is slick and chewy.
- 120°–140°: myosin coagulates, squeezing water out of the cell and into the sheaths surrounding muscle fibers. Now your meat is “juicy.”
- 140°–150°: collagen denatures and shrinks, squeezing water out of the fibers and onto your pan. Now your meat is dry and dense.
- 160°+: collagen starts melting into gelatin, adding succulence. The fibers it held together will now fall apart easily.
So your meat can seem tender because it’s full of juice when you bite into it (120–140°), or it can seem tender because the dry, stiff fibers fall apart easily and ooze velvety gelatin (160°+).
Tough meats like short ribs are full of collagen and other connective tissues, so they’ll only be tender at the higher temperature. “Tender” meats like filet don’t have much collagen, so they won’t produce gelatin at high temperatures. They’ll just be dry.
Boiling your braise will just make the fibers tougher, so braise at a low simmer. That’ll still dissolve the collagen, though it’ll take longer.
Other braising tenderness tips: cool the meat in its braising liquid, and it will reabsorb some lost fluid. Slice the meat across the “grain” of muscle fibers, so the fibers in each bite are short.
Of course, if you cook your short ribs sous vide at 133° for long enough, the collagen will still melt, and your meat will still be rare.
