Will uncooked meat tenderise or toughen while stored in a refrigerator?
In an effort to make fewer food shopping trips, I want to store meat in the fridge for a few days before cooking.
However, if I'm entertaining guests I want the meat to be as tender as possible.
Will storing meat in the fridge for a couple of days affect the tenderness to any noticeable degree?
Best Answer
While dry aging does impact texture, storing a portion that you might purchase for yourself, or a small number of people, in the refrigerator for a few days will not impact the final texture. Instead, consider purchasing high quality cuts, and the correct cut for your application. Consider a tenderizing pre-treatment (some marinades are intended for tenderization). Finally, of course, cooking process will greatly impact the final texture.
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Should I store raw meat in the fridge?
Most uncooked meat, regardless of cut, can be stored in the fridge for three to five days. But there are definitely exceptions. Ground meat and offal like liver and kidneys should only be kept in the fridge for one to two days.How do you keep meat tender in the fridge?
Store raw meat, poultry and seafood on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator so juices don't drip onto other foods and cause cross-contamination. When thawing meat in the refrigerator meat should be placed on a plate or in a container to prevent juices from contaminating other foods.How do you store raw meat in the fridge?
For raw ground meats, poultry, seafood and variety meats (liver, tongue, chitterlings, etc.), refrigerate them only 1 to 2 days before either cooking or freezing. Beef, veal, lamb and pork roasts, steaks and chops may be kept 3 to 5 days.How To Tenderize ANY Meat!
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Answer 2
This depends on many factors. From what I've seen, meat tenderness vs. toughness depends mainly on the amount of shock you create when cooking it.
The main effects I've observed:
- if you put the super-cold meat from the refrigerator right on the pan, the shocked proteins (esp. long keratin fibers) are going to shrink, causing the steak to became super compressed and tough as a result. This doesn't happen (too much) if your meat is room-temperature before cooking it.
- you can prepare the meat chemically to withstand this shock better. E.g., add salt a few hours earlier (even in the refrigerator) to avoid a brutal ion gradient passing through your steak when cooked right after being salted, again shocking the protein
- technically, storing the meat in the right conditions (relatively dry and cold) lets the protein slowly degrade and make it respond less, thus making the result less tough again.
How long it is stored in the freezer alone, i.e. without any kind of marinade, and with no biological protein degradation process going on (as with dry aging), should not generally matter. At least until your meat gets spoiled.
Extras:
tenderizer tools work by breaking much of the "long" protein chains, thus making this shrinking shock less prominent in the result
non-pH-neutral ingredients (lemon, milk, youghurts,...) are a great way to reduce the shock chemically
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