Slow Cooking Made Easy
Many receipies call for specific types of meat in order to prepare the receipe properly. The biggest problem many suffer is if they cannot get the right cut, they will have to substitue say a chuck steak for a brasing steak. This sometimes has disasterous results since each cut has different moisture retention and different toughness already. I have several tricks to keep my meat moist (no pun intended) and tender. If you have access to a crock pot or slow cooker, these are the best kithcen appliances in the world. Let's use my favorite example of the Pot Roast. 1 x 1lb Pot roast (or chuck roast or any other cut), 6 cubes of Beef Bolian, 6 cups of water, 1/2 stick of butter (1/2 cup), your favorite spices (I prefer pepper, sea salt, 1 tbl spoon garlic, onion powder, and meat tenderizer). I stab the meat with a fork all over to open up the under layers of meat. Then rub the meat with the powdery spices. Place meat into bottom of crock pot. Add your favorite veggies (carrots and thinly cut potatoes are the best). Add the water, butter, and bolian cubes to pot. Cook on med-high (depending on the cooker) for 4 hours. Check potatoes for tenderness. Flip meat and cook another 30 minutes. Cut and serve. This will keep it moist.
If you do not have access to a crock pot/slow cooker, you can still get moist meat while using the oven. A good way is to take the receipe above and cut the water down to 1 cup and disolve the cubes inside the measuring cup. You will need baking bags comonly used for turkeys at Thanksgiving made by Renolds. I've used both the disposable ones as well as a cooking pan I make spagheti noodles using. Place bag in your choice of pan after following it's instructions of flouring it. Place seasoned meat, carrots, and potatoes inside bag in a baking pan. Add butter and water/bolian mixture to bag. Cut slits in bag (I prefer close to the top of the bag so I can flip it if needed). Bake for time specified for weight on bag (all bags are different). Filp about half way through cooking but be consious of where the slits in the bag are at so you don't mess the pan if you don't need to do so. Remove from bag and serve.
These are my two methods of keeping my meat all nice and juicy without becoming tough. If you cannot do either of these, the only other way to keep the meat from drying out is to place the food in a pan that has a lid and baste every half hour until cooked.
