2 weeks Ago By Grace Piercy
With a bank holiday on the horizon and summer just around the corner, the smell of barbecuing meats will soon be in the air. Award-winning chef and restaurateur Richard H Turner shared his top tip for ensuring even the cheaper cuts of meat are "juicy and tender": cooking them at low heat. After describing barbecuing as “an alchemy of wood, smoke, and meat”, he told the Guardian that it is key to understand the role played by collagen in the meat.
Cheaper cuts, he explained, usually have more collagen than prime ones, but it is still possible to make them into a great meal. He said: "To turn a tough, collagen-rich cut into something juicy and tender, you need to cook the muscle at an even, low heat. "This gives it a chance to break down and dissolve into soft gelatine, which bastes and moistens the meat from the inside.
As a result, cheap cuts are best suited to slow, indirect cooking or smoking, while prime cuts benefit from faster, more direct cooking." He said that barbecued meat should be at least 4cm thick and brought to room temperature before cooking. It should also be dried before being “aggressively” seasoned with sea salt.
Meat should be seasoned, but oil isn't needed as the meat won’t stick if the grill is at the right temperature. Mr Turner is an acclaimed chef who has been trained by Marco Pierre White, who made history in 1995 for becoming the youngest chef to earn three Michelin stars. In 2009, he joined Hawksmoor, one of Britain's most famous steakhouse chains, and is now a meat consultant for several other famous restaurants alongside an acclaimed writer.
His cookbooks include the 2015 bestseller Hog..
