I’m having trouble with braising/stewing/slowcooking beef (pork too, for that matter). The most recent example: I made slow cooker fajitas last week, and although I cooked the beef for the maximum time suggested (8 hours on low) the meat is not tender enough. I’m not sure if I overcooked it, or undercooked it. Does it just get more and more tender the longer it cooks? Or did I pass some magic just-past-tender mark? The meat wasn’t dried out, just too chewy, and it was covered with liquid (and peppers and onions) the entire time it was cooking.
This has happened to me before. My gut feeling is that I should have cooked it longer, but I can’t shake the feeling that it was overcooked. What’s the rule of thumb with braising and stewing?
If it wasn’t dried out and just chewy then it could have cooked longer. IME even braised meat gets kind of dry and mealy textured when it is over done.
Keep the temps low and the cooking slow. Keep plenty of broth on the meat and, if it is an especially tough cut consider cutting it up a little before braising.
Although I’ve made a nice soft, juicy stringy brisket in one piece with beef broth and red wine (a few aromatic spices here and there) in about half the time you mentioned so you might want to add a little more heat.
Yes, “mealy” is the sign of overcooked meat, or meat cooked at too high a temperature. It means the proteins have gone past the denatured (loose and soft) stage and back to wound up tight little balls of ick.
I’ve never run into anything that wasn’t done by 8 hours, though.
What cuts are you using in the slowcooker, and at what setting? In my experience lean cuts of meat do not do well in the slowcooker - they get quite dry. You want a less-lean cut for the slowcooker.
This particular cut was a flank steak, one of the few times I actually used the cut suggested in the recipe. The minimum cooktime was 6 hours. I usually go for the faster time, but I wasn’t around to stop the thing earlier.
Flank steak is best cooked quickly over dry heat. There are some websites saying that it’s fine for braising, but, in my opinion, the meat is too lean and usually butchered much too thin for a good braise.
For a crockpot beef barbacoa-type dish, I would use chuck roast or any other decent stewing cut (beef cheeks are traditional around here.) I would save the flank for marinading and grilling.
I wouldn’t slow cook flank steak either. It’s a tough but lean cut.
If you’ve got meat that’s tough to begin with, you want it to also be more on the fatty side for good results under slow cooking of any type - it’s the rendered fat that helps make them tender.
I’d marinate the crap out of a flank steak, grill it for a very short time at a high temperature (don’t want to go past medium or you’ll end up with leather) and then slice it very thin.
Ya know, I started writing that in my edit, but then my edit window ran out and I didn’t bother posting it.
While we’re on the subject, “slow cooker fajitas” seems to be a bit of a misnomer to me. Fajitas, as I know them, always contain grilled or griddled meat. The word “fajita” itself originally referred to skirt steak, but the word has expanded to encompass a variety of meats grilled and served on a tortilla, often with grilled peppers, onions, and that sort of thing.
Fajita has turned into a pretty ambiguous term, but I haven’t seen it yet used to describe something not cooked on a grill or a griddle.
My normal method for fajitas is very simple: skirt marinated in freshly squeezed lime juice and salt or soy sauce.
Thanks everyone. It was actually pretty tasty, and simpler, due to the fact that I wasn’t home, than grilling it. Next time, I’ll grill it or stick to fattier cuts of beef.
Something you can do before cooking: douse the meat thoroughly with papain, (pah-PIE-in) which is from papaya juice. It could be sold as “all natural meat tenderizer” or some such. Or you could just use papaya juice as a marinade.
Ya know, I started writing that in my edit, but then my edit window ran out and I didn’t bother posting it.