Yes! There are healthy ways to cook and serve red meat!
We love our red meat and we want to cook it in the healthiest manner possible.
From my experience, below are some healthy ways you can cook and serve red meat:
Use skirt steak
I love skirt steak! Aside from brisket it is my favourite cut. It is from the mid area of the animal, and it is naturally tasty and lean. I prefer to apply a dry heat cookery method to this cut (grilling or pan frying) as opposed to braising it. If you do pan fry or grill skirt steak, aim to use a healthy oil with a high smoke point. This leads me to:
Use an extra virgin olive oil with a high smoke point
I know that this can be very hard to come by. Extra virgin olive oil has terrific health benefits but sometimes it can be hard to cook with because, at some point, it will burn. This means that the smoke point is too low, affect the meat flavour and be carcinogenic.
Before I mention this, I just want to say that I have no affiliation with any oil company. I just want to highly recommend Cobram Extra Virgin OIive oil. So far it is the only extra virgin olive oil that I know that has a high smoke point – enough to pan fry with.
Salt
I do love salt. I use the pink Himalayan table salt. If you salt your meat early enough then you will not need as much as you think. The salt that you sprinkle on your meat, will, over time, evenly permeate the meat. If you put a little salt on your meat 3 hours to the day before you plan to cook it, you will taste it inside the meat. Therefore, putting a little salt early will go as far (if not further) than putting a lot on and cooking it straight away.
Natural flavours
Maybe not all of us love garlic, ginger, fresh herbs or freshly squeezed lemon or orange juice (to name a few) but they are natural flavours with a lot of goodness. Therefore, why not use them as part and parcel of your meat flavouring? A suggestion is to use them after you have removed the meat from the pan. What I mean is to make use of what is left in the pan. What is left in the pan are delicious meat sediments and juices. Reduce these down on a medium heat. As you are doing this add to the pan some of these delicious and natural ingredients (crush the garlic and chopped fresh herbs such as rosemary), stir or scrape to combine and you will create a delicious and instant flavouring to coat over your steak. Experience is your best teacher when experimenting with this.
Salsas
In my opinion this is a fantastic way to provide a health edge to your steak! They are so simple to create. You really do not need a recipe – just create your own! If your salsa is full of colour then it will be vibrant and you know you will have the flavour and nutrients. Given their simplicity and speed to create, making a salsa to serve as an accompaniment to your steak makes for a seriously overall delicious and wholesome meal. A salsa can be as simple as finely chopped:
- Tomatoes
- Red and yellow capsicum
- Red onion
- Fresh coriander
- Optional: add avocado (now that would be delicious!)
- Optional: add a legume such as cannellini beans (dried or tinned). This adds so much more to the salsa and makes it more wholesome and filling.
Tossed in a simple yet healthy and delicious dressing of freshly squeezed lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil.
I love to have this with my skirt steak.
The cut of meat
In my book titled Your Meat Mate I group meat in to 2 categories:
Tough cuts and Tender cuts
Tough cuts are healthier than their tender counterparts. They are more exercised hence more flavourful and leaner (which means they are healthier). Not only that, they are cheaper! They are full of connective tissue so they need long and slow cooking in the oven.
I have already mentioned skirt steak in my first point. This is a tough cut. It defies my message that tough cuts mean slow cooking. I say this because grilling and panfrying are ideal cooking methods for this cut.
Tender cuts don’t do as much exercise so they have a higher fat content. They are delicious and tender, but the tougher cuts are leaner.
Conclusion
Eating healthy is so critically important no matter how fit we are and our age. If we can eat red meat int the healthiest manner possible then we feel terrific at the end of the meal. Using skills and knowledge to properly cook red meat coupled with some ideas to make the meals as healthy and as wholesome as you can means you truly are a terrific, capable chef who knows how to cook red meat meals to perfection.
Good luck in healthy and skillful red meat cooking.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
For more blogs and information, please visit www.yourmeatmate.com