A partial tear of my scapholunate ligament, a tiny band of connective tissue that holds a couple of small yet critically important bones in my hand in precisely the right place. The bad news was that the tear required surgery. The good news: It wasn't a full tear. Now, let's think about that. One hundred and seventy pounds, in free-fall, onto my dainty little wrist. It's amazing more damage wasn't done. And that gets me to the main point: Connective tissue, like my ligament, is largely composed of a protein called collagen, and it is very, very strong.
Collagen-rich connective tissue, though, isn't found just in ligaments and tendons; it's found to varying degrees in muscles, too. The amount of collagen you're likely to find in a muscle is related to how much that muscle is used: The stronger a muscle is, and the more it has to work for the animal, the more collagen you'll find in it.
Beef tenderloin? It's a weak muscle, which means that it's low in collagen and very tender—hence the name. A cow's shoulder muscles, known as the chuck, on the other hand, support much of its body weight, which makes them very strong, collagen-rich, and, yup, you guessed it: tough.
Other factors also help determine the amount of collagen, like age younger animals have more of it , but how much a muscle is used and its strength are the biggest predictors within any given animal. At this point, you're likely wondering what this has to do with stew. And, once again, the answer is collagen. See, collagen is tough as heck when raw—you'll have as much luck chewing through it as my free-falling friend did completely tearing my ligament—but cook it long enough and it'll transform into meltingly soft gelatin, giving the meat a moist and tender texture.
That gelatin will also seep into the surrounding stew liquids, increasing their viscosity and giving them rich body. But simmer a low-collagen, tender-when-raw cut like tenderloin for three hours, and it'll turn horribly tough and dry.
To give you a visual, I simmered lean, collagen-poor beef eye round for two hours. As you can see in the photo below, the cut has relatively little marbling—intramuscular fat and connective tissue i.
Once fully cooked, it's pretty much a stew's worst nightmare, nothing but tight little bundles of parched muscle fiber. What's interesting about all of this is that regardless of how much collagen a piece of beef has, it'll lose roughly the same amount of moisture when cooked. I weighed two equal, gram portions of beef, one chuck lots of collagen and connective tissue and the other eye round not much at all , then simmered them for two hours and re-weighed.
The chuck lost grams of its weight, while the eye round lost grams, a measly gram difference. That means both cuts dry out approximately the same amount, but the chuck, with the help of its gelatin, seems to be moister when you eat it. Chuck or Blade Steak This is leaner cut of meat that comes from the shoulder area.
Oyster Blade Steak Some people believe this is the best cut to use in a stew or casserole. In fact most people prefer to use this cut above the rest, but the downside is the cost! Oyster Blade steak has a lot of flavour that comes from the breakdown of connective tissue that you can see when looking at it. We grew up on braising and stews. McDermott thinks his mother relied on stews and braising because, for one thing, she only had a four-hob stove and had to feed a large family from it.
Stewing and braising was efficient for her, and the cuts of meat were often cheap. See a sample. Exclusive competitions and restaurant offers, plus reviews, the latest food and drink news, recipes and lots more. Please update your payment details to keep enjoying your Irish Times subscription. Now We Know Aoife McElwain. Topics: Magazine. Restaurant reviews. Home energy upgrades are now more important than ever. The Dublin start-up making the future better with an appreciation for innovation.
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