- Hello, welcome back. Today, two of our normal home cooks are gonna try a variety of methods to elevate their meat. And by that we mean take cheaper cuts and make them super succulent,
tender and delicious. Boys, you ready? (Barry laughs) - Today is gonna be littered with bennuendos and I'm just over it. - Right, number one. - What we got, Ebbers? - Well, first off, we've
got some fairly lean beef. So top side, full of flavour. - I asked him so that we
wouldn't look silly guessing it. - Well done. I like your thinking. - But it will benefit from you adding some mechanical tenderising, and by that I mean using
your muscles or your tools. - I told you. I warned you. I warned you. - What did he say? - You're gonna use your tool to tenderise. - No, I wanna give you my tool for you to tenderise it. It is a jacquard needle. - A jacquard? - Ah-ha, yes. - Oh, these things. I've never used. (laughs) - We've already cut some
nice and thin for you. We're going to cook those as they are. But the thicker slices, you can bash out to about the same thickness
with your needles. - Do it, yeah, yeah.
- Just bash it? - [Ben] 20 holes. 40, 60, 80, 100. (tool thumping) - [Mike] Yeah, that's about right. That's it. - Have a go.
- Thanks. - What are the, what are the. Oh, come on. Come on, Michael. (tool thumping) - [Mike] That's about right, isn't it? - So essentially, if you've
got a tougher piece of meat, it might be full of flavour,
but once you cook it, it is your jaw that's gonna have to do all of that effort. Lots and lots of chewing to get through all of the fibres, and the muscle, and the collagen between the muscles. Essentially, this is an instant way to physically tenderise. It does the mastication for you. So once you've got holes, hundreds of them in your meat, that will enable marinades to kind of get in there a bit more. In this instance, we're
just going to flour them in seasoned flour and pan fry in oil. So more traditional methods might be a tenderising mallet. - Yeah, I've got one of those at home and I use that for bashing
out chicken breast, which can get notoriously tough, or chewy, or rubbery if you overcook it. And I find definitely the mallet helps. - This is something I never
do at home, flouring steak. - So it is a protective layer and it also adds a seasoning. You can of course add
some spice into that, but be careful those spices don't burn. - I'm buzzing to see the results of this. Should we get 'em in? - Patience. Patience, Michael. - What? What's happened to you? - Well, it's been years since we've done this approach of a floured, or a breaded, or a dredged steak, country fried style. It's the one we did with Tom Daley. - [Mike] That's smelling good, that's smelling good, go.
- Go, go, go. How long on side, Ebbers? - A couple of minutes. Give it a flip. (meat sizzling) - Lovely stuff. Leave it to rest as usual? - Yep, we'll leave it to
rest for a minute or so, and then we'll see what the difference is. This is the very simplest of experiments because we've done nothing other than some seasoned
flour and pan fry it off. Will those hundreds of holes that you stabbed into
it make any difference? - I mean, it feels very tender. Lovely blush in the middle. Oh, nicely cooked, Chef. - Thank you very much. - Cheers.
- Normal standard steak. - Very tasty. - Absolutely delicious, but it is a tougher cut of meat. - Yeah, definitely. - And it is a cheaper cut
of meat, bearing in mind. You know, you could buy a fillet, you could buy even a ribeye that's marbled with more fat. They are prime cuts and will eat better. What we're saying is with
a seven, eight, nine pound meat tenderising needle, can you improve? - [Barry] I can't see any of the holes. - That's a lot juicier. - A lot juicier, but it's just as chewy. - Yeah, but it's succulent. It's more pleasure. It's a more pleasurable chew. I think it's chewy, juicy, and I think it's got less
fibres to bite it through. - You're having to masticate less. - Chew, he means chew. - It makes a massive difference. How much difference that makes over a mallet and so on, I don't know. - Well, every time you push down, you're getting 20 puncture. So it's got 20 needles there that's doing the job very quickly for you. This is the first of four
that we're gonna explore. This one is instant. Let's move on to round two. - [Mike] If you are enjoying this, there are some small things you can do that make a big difference to us. Like the video. Subscribe if you aren't. Click the notification
bell and select all. Thanks! - Number two, we're
gonna have a little look at marinades and the key here is acid. So what you've got is some chicken thighs. You've got two bowls that
are currently identical. Ginger, garlic, chilli
and a selection of spices, turmeric, Kashmiri chill and the alike. - Delicious. - Mix half the chicken into each bowl. - Okay. Oh, the smells. - Surely all this spice is doing all the hard work for us. This is just flavour. - It's a lot of well-balanced flavour. But now one of the bowls, we're going to add acid to. - Yummy acid. - Who's feeling more sour? - I'm feeling sour, Ebbers. - Excellent. In that case, can you add
yoghourt and lemon juice? So that is citric acid of lemon and lactic acid of yoghourt. - Oh, look at that. - Oh! When I get to this bit in a recipe and it says, "Now leave it overnight," I'll go, yeah, whatever. It'll be fine. I can't wait. - You can only leave it overnight if you've planned a day in advance. - That doesn't happen.
- The question is, will it make any difference? We have got a bowl of each that we've prepared 12 hours ago. So it has had the overnight
marinade in spices, and marinade in spices and acid. But there's one more
tip to add to your bowl, Mike, chickpea flour. - Interesting. Now this is brand new. - [Barry] What? Why? - Couple of reasons. One, it has a slight nutty flavour that it is gonna add to the marinade. But in all honesty what it's gonna do is thicken the marinade
around the chicken, or any meat your marinading, which means you need less of it, because the marinade kind of clings rather than has to sit
submerged in the marinade. And when you cook it, it sticks as well. - Cheaper cut of meat, less ingredients, levelling it up. - Would you like to see what happens if we were to leave both bowls overnight and then cook 'em off? - Yeah.
- Yes, please. - Ah, the smells. - It smells great. - Okay, you've got a lovely little chutney as well there,
but chicken on its own. - Right, so that's gotta be my one, right? - Yeah, it's wet, isn't it? - I really want to dip it, but no. Cheers.
- Cheers. - So, we think this is Barry's. Oh, the flavour on that. - Oh my goodness. - Some lovely spicing. - That is stunning. - It's all up here as well. - If I made that, I'd be chuffed, because it still is pretty tender and really, really perfectly cooked. - Chicken thighs are generally speaking a cheaper cut of chicken than chicken breast per kilo, and generally more succulent and more forgiving when you cook it. You don't dry it out as quickly. However, what's the acid doing? - It's wetter. Are we expecting the acid to kind of like- - Tenderise it, I think. - Right through? - Yeah. Oh, yeah! Big difference. The chicken feels lighter. It's got more of a juicy bite. It's not just chew through, oh, that's nice. When you bite into it, it's got a bit more of a bounce. Juices come out of it. It's a pleasure to eat that. - And for the sake of sort
of clarity and consistency, both were cooked exactly the same way. So the only difference is the addition of yoghourt, and lemon, and chickpea flour into the marinade. But mostly, it's that
lactic and citric acid, as well as a few of the
microbes in the live yoghourt. - Because they're so much juicier, is there more room for error? So can you overcook it slightly and it still have a
little bit of juice in it? Rather than the others
being drying out quickly. - That's a good question. That's a very normal question. I like that. - Chicken breast versus chicken thigh, big difference. You can have a bit more
leeway on chicken thigh because it is already more succulent. This marinade will give you even more of a buffer, I suppose. One thing worth noting though, it's not more time is better. If you were to leave that in the yoghourt and lemon marinade for a couple of days, the
texture becomes almost pappy, 'cause the acid over tenderises. So it's not just yoghourt and lemon, anything that is acidic. Wine's a good example. But any kind of citrus. - It's awesome. - Yoghourt, buttermilk,
or even just a splash of cider white wine vinegar in a marinade will begin
to do that for you. Some hot sauce are vinegar based and would also do that, as
our some barbecue sauces. So any of these can begin to break down the proteins in tougher, cheaper cuts. - No more effort either. Just about being organised.
- Just time. Yeah, that's always it. - Okay, stand out difference? - The acid marinate, far more tender. Like a really pleasurable, juicy bite. The first one, you know, if you'd have served it to me, instantly, I was like, this is delicious. This is cooked really well. But the two are worlds apart when you compare them. - Taste wise, they taste the same 'cause it's the same spices. They served different purposes. - Yeah. If anything, the acid marinade tastes a little bit creamier and almost smoother
because of the yoghourt diluting some of those spices, which I think is also more pleasant. - In which case, let's
move on to round three. - [Mike] If you're
loving the sound of this, you can check it out on our brand new Sorted Food tab on Sidekick. Scan the QR code now or
click the link below. - [Mike] Pork butt steaks. - This I'm more unfamiliar with. - What did you say, Mike? - Steaks.
- Bottom steaks. - Pork butt. - Not bottom steaks. It's a relatively cheap cut of meat that has lots and lots of flavour, but works hard through a pig's life. It's the shoulders. They spent all their times rooting around, and therefore that
shoulder's got the weight of the head and the four legs. They're big, big muscles, therefore you need to
work them quite hard. They're great for long, slow braises. However, we're gonna apply salt. - Oh, yes. - Oh, right. - Now we're talking. This is where I hoped we were going, into the zone of the unknown, 'cause I don't know what
we're about to do here, and that's what I'm looking forward to. - I think you probably do. We've spoken about it before. You might never have done it, brining. - Yeah.
- Yeah. - So we're gonna make a salty solution, about 5% salt to water. It's also got a little
bit of sugar in there. And once you've got that, you then submerge all of your meat in. We're gonna do 50/50, half of the shoulder
steaks in and half not. - This feels weird. - In this instance, because the main ingredient is water, it's not a problem that
there's more than you need. It's enough to submerge. You can do this with whole birds. You can do this with tougher cuts of meat, like pork steaks. This is a process of osmosis. Essentially, there's now an imbalance between salt in the meat
and out of the meat. They kind of switch over. And by doing that, you're
adding more moisture into the proteins and the meat, plus the salt over time does denature the proteins. - So how long are we leaving this? - Same as the acid, you need a fair amount of time overnight. - What I like about that
though as a process is- - You could do that without any- - There's no shopping involved. I have water, I have salt. - Yeah. - This could be a game changer. - Something I've recently learned, quite often, a brine like that, I might put in some orange peel, some rosemary, some
peppercorns, some bay leaf. So you actually begin
to flavour the brine. You can bring it up to a quick simmer to give some flavour into it, dissolve the salt and let it do its thing. Apparently, those volatile
flavour and aroma compounds are actually too big to get in, so they actually don't
make any difference. - Well, especially not the bay leaf. I mean, that's not gonna
make any difference no matter what you do with it. - Let's see what
difference overnight makes. - [Mike] So, same again. One's been brined, one hasn't. - [Ben] Yep. - Right.
- This one might be harder to tell by looks. - We might have to eat quite a lot to find some discoveries. We've got Kush's lucky dip again. - Yep. Start with the pork without, so we can see the comparison, and then you can tuck in to the mango and pineapple
kind of barbecue sauce. - Wow, that cuts very, very easily. - Cheers.
- Cheers. - So after the brining, or not brining, these have then been
relatively quickly cooked. - That is so succulent. I think we have a front runner. - That has to be the brined
version because it's- - Juicy. - Juicy AF and I was expecting
it to be really chewy. - Tough day at the office, hey boys? - Cheers. - I'd say that's juicier. - Yeah, it is.
- That has more, that has just been, oh my goodness. Give it a bit of time. The juices are released. - Oh, wow. - I say there's more flavour going on, because I think that has
been seasoned as well. - Inside and out. - I think you can taste, can you taste a salt on the inside? I think it tastes salty on the inside. These ones, B, that's
gotta be the the brined. - B is the brined one. You'll also notice, 'cause the brine had a
little bit of sugar in it, it's also given the pork a
bit more colour as it cooks. But the main difference
will be the brining and the wonders of osmosis. - That is the biggest
difference, isn't it? - I'll go as far to say the non-brined version is a bit bland. - So, you're talking about this from a seasoning point of view, as well as a succulent point of view. - It's one-dimensional, whereas suddenly now it's been brined, not only is it juicier,
it's been seasoned, it's got a different
texture to it as well. - Mike's just eating,
just keep going for more. - Where'd it go? - I just gotta eat it. - It's obviously good. - So would you only brine
with specific meats, like pork or beef, or
could you brine chicken? - You can definitely
brine poultry, for sure, and turkey is a classic one. - Oh yeah, of course.
- That I thought you'd have known.
- Yeah, of course. - You brine a whole turkey in a big bucket at Christmas, and what it does is make it more and more tender,
but also as it cooks, it retains more of that moisture, because of the osmosis and
the salt being on the inside. - One more bite. One more bite. - Do you want one more? - Oh! Okay. - Brine's my middle name. - (laughs) It actually is. Nice. - We can't think of any more methods, so. - What are you doing here? - Here, we have some lamb neck fillet and two marinades that at
the moment are identical. Oregano, coriander, oil, bit of salt. Mix away, half and half. - Half and half.
- I think I'm kind of expecting something special here. - Well, the fact that there is no point of difference currently leads me to think Kush is gonna come in dressed up as something with something
weird in his hand, and I pray to God it's
not a salty solution. - On the topic of elevating meat, we're not changing the
cooking methods here. We're just doing something
special to it, early doors. - What could we- - Any ideas what this is? - (sighs) As if. He can't help himself, can he? - Oh, no. Where did he pull that from? (Barry laughs) - That is a big cucumber. - No. You've both got meaty fingers. - [Mike] Ready? - I don't understand how I
have no idea what this is. - Ready.
- It's a big cucumber, isn't it? No! - You know what it is. You just might not have
seen one this early. - Oh, that's not pleasant. - No.
- But it's very- - Green. - Floral. Oh, I do know what that is. Oh. I've used a face mask of this. - Of course you have. - Very possibly. In its current form, you shouldn't eat too much of it. This is papaya. - No it's not. - But it is a green papaya and it is an unripe papaya. And if you take the flesh
out and puree it up, you end up with this. - I have-
- Okay. - I have put that on my face. (laughs) - And why have you put it on your face? - Ooh, interesting- - Because some Instagram influencer probably told him to. - My wife. (laughs) - So about a tablespoon
to a pound of meat. - This feels mad. - It has natural enzymes in it that break down proteins and the collagen between
the meat and the muscles. So it's called papain,
I think is the enzyme that naturally occurs in papaya. You get less and less of it as the papaya ripens. So it has to be a green unripe papaya. And then basically if you take out, blend it up, that paste, which keeps for quite a while, can be added into marinades, and give it a period of time, and the enzyme will do its job. You do find similar
enzymes in other fruits, pineapple, kiwi, figs, and those in marinades really start to break down tougher cuts of meat. - This marinade doesn't include the Rice Krispies inside? - Those are the seeds, and if you let them
ripen, they become black, you can actually toast, roast them, and they become quite a nice seasoning, like almost like a pepper,
they have been used for. But basically, you wouldn't wanna eat a huge amount of this, because it will begin to affect
your own digestive system. But a little bit does wonders before you cook it to the meat. So we'll leave that again overnight and then we'll cook both off. Do you wanna see the results? - Yeah! - Yes. - [Barry] Interesting. - Again, see if you can tell the difference between A and B. (upbeat music) - That is succulent. - Wow. - Again, side by side, not something you do every day. - It tastes inflated. - (laughs) Inflated? - It's so weird. So standout difference
is it feels plumper. It's juicier. It almost has more of a bounce. - You got a quince vinegarette there. So yeah, quite acidic
but fruity and delicious. - I haven't even got to that. I'm too astounded by this. So B is definitely the one that's been papayaed. Hugely different. More succulent. Requires less chewing, for sure- - So tender.
- Like so tender. - It feels like it's already been chewed very lightly around the outside. - No, this sounds ridiculous
and kind of disgusting, but before they were cooked
and you take them out of their different marinades, raw on the board, one looked
like it had been chewed. And that is quite literally that natural enzymic reaction that is breaking down the proteins. - The first version's great. It is fibrous. It has got a chew. It tastes delicious. It is succulent, but it's
very, very different to B, which is just tender. No give whatsoever. You're just like, oh,
wow, where did that go? I wouldn't imagine being able to get near to that standard of cooking 'cause I just
think that's so precise. But clearly with a bit of papaya you can. What's been fascinating
about this entire process is the side by side comparison. A lot of the time, especially as normal, you go into something and you go, I've heard that brining is better. I've heard that marinating is better, but maybe I won't bother. Now there's a clear difference as to why you do it and
we've experienced that. I'd say that's probably the hardest in that you've got to
get hold of the papaya, and maybe the price of the lamb neck would be maybe something that I wouldn't consider taking a leap on yet. But all the others, easy peasy, done and really effective. - You can actually just
buy jars of papaya paste already kind of done for you. Alternatively, you can
buy meat tenderizer, which is basically that enzyme that's been extracted. And it literally says on the back, "Meat tenderizer contains papain from the papaya fruit." - Oh, wow. So how do you use the dried stuff then? - Same way, you just add
it into your marinade. - Oh, wow. Do you need much of it? This is 100 grammes. - I don't think you need much, like a teaspoon in marinade. - Oh, perfect. - But you must cook it, because basically that enzyme will carry on denaturing proteins when it gets down into your gut. So you do want to cook it. - You'll have no abs left. By the time it's got through, you'll lose all your six pack. - Okay, so we've looked at
mechanically tenderising. We've looked at acids, salt brines, and the enzymic kind of
breakdown of proteins. The question for you guys at home, do you already use any
of those when marinating or treating your meat before you cook it? Comment down below. - And if you have any other methods that we should explore in
the future, let us know and we'll also put those to the test. - I'm gonna be dipping my pork in salt brine more often. - See ya! ♪ Come on ♪
I’m amazed that with this many innuendos in it, the video was still that informative.
Definitely trying that enzyme. There's a shop by me that stocks loads by that brand.