Cutting Against The Grain -- Why & How?

cutting against the grain we've all heard that you're supposed to cut against the grain when you're carving up meat why today I'm gonna show you [Music] so to demonstrate the process behind cutting against the grain today I'm going to be using a tri-tip as an example we're gonna be cutting into this both when it's raw and another one when it's cooked so we can look at the grain structure when we're talking about the grain we're talking about the way the muscle fibers run in the meat if you can look in this tri-tip you can very clearly follow the lines but they don't all run one direction across the entire cut of meat you can see here they go this way here they start to turn over here every piece of meat is a little bit different tri-tip is different from top round or brisket or chuck roast you have to look at each individual piece of meat and you can usually do that from the outside first to see where the lines of the fibers are running so first thing I'm going to do here I'm going to cut a cross-section so we can take a look at it so here we've cut across the grain of this tri-tip and if you look in there you can see individual fibers the ends of them that we've cut across all these individual little fibers have been severed so this is what it should look like when you're cutting a raw piece of meat and you're seeing against the grain now let's take a look of with the grain so here as you can see you can actually see the strings of muscle fiber running through here you're not seeing those severed ends because we've cut them lengthwise so why is this important why do people say you should cut across the grain or against the grain and not with it when you're gonna be serving meat let me try and demonstrate we're gonna take one small section of the end of this piece of tri-tip here and we've cut that across the grain we're also going to take a section with the grain here you can very clearly see the long muscle fibers because we've cut with the grain and you can see the ends of the muscle fibers here the little sort of shapes that have been severed so imagine that you've cooked these two pieces of meat and we'll be demonstrating this with a cooked piece of tri-tip later here you have the ends of the muscle fibers and here you have the length of the muscle fibers if your teeth are biting into these it's sliding between them it's going to be easier to bite through these you're going to be biting across an entire length of muscle fiber many different muscle fibers there's another way that I can try and show you what this means here are the ends of a bundle of straws if I take this bundle of straws and turn them lengthwise and I try and pull that's going to be extremely difficult to break through these but imagine that I've cut these across the grain here would be the end of the piece of meats similar to the ends of these muscle fibers if I want to pull these apart all I have to do is that cutting against the grain just allows you to have shorter sections of those muscle fibers that your teeth can go through and slide between instead of cutting across them that's why it's more tender when you bite into a piece of meat that's been cut across the grain now it's time to smoke up a tri-tip and try it on a cooked piece of meat so start the slo-mo and cue that music [Music] so here we have our cooked tri-tip and you can still very clearly in the surface of this see some of the grain lines but let me give you a tip in case you are not sure that you're gonna remember which way the grain runs a very simple thing to do before you start cooking take out your phone take a picture of the meat that way you'll be able to refer back to it to see which way the grain lines run another simple tip you simply go to the end of a piece of meat like the tri-tip here what I would do I know that the grain runs this way and I would square off that end that way I'll remember that cutting across the grain is just going parallel to that initial cut so let's cut into this tri-tip now and we're gonna take a slice across the grain and with the grain and see the difference when we bite into it so this is a cut across the grain you can clearly see the ends of those muscle fibers that we've severed let's take a slice out of this set that aside now we're going to take a slice with the grain you can see in this so you can actually follow the fibers all the way along the cut that's what you're going to be biting through if you're taking a slice with the grain but let's see let's take a taste of each so here is a slice with the grain you can actually see the fibers just running straight this way in the meat let's take a bite tastes good but there is choo there you're having to work to get through the meat now let's take a bite of the piece that is across the grain have you ever heard that saying you know melts in your mouth well this isn't melting in your mouth but the effort it takes to bite into chew is minimal because your teeth aren't having to work to cut through fibers they're sliding between them and if you're working less to chew through the meat you're gonna enjoy the flavor a lot more mmm and really any video that uses tri-tip for a demonstration well that's okay by me mmm I hope you enjoyed this video feel free to check out some of the other videos on my channel and consider subscribing and if you do click that bell for notifications thank you all for watching I hope you have a great day I'll see you again soon

Channel: Cooking With Ry

Views: 409,913

Keywords: cooking, cooking channel, cooking with ry, ryne pearson, ryne douglas pearson, grilling, cooking tips, bbq, barbecue

Id: fHhVR3MqUB4

Length: 6min 55sec (415 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 24 2018