Online Cooking School Forum

Sigrid K. answered on 28 Jun 2014

Best Answer

Hi Jaclyn,

A pressure cooker is great, but if you want your curries and stews to have the soft, fall apart texture you're looking for the solution could lie in a few things. When you're buying meat, look for the tough, sinewy cuts like shin and brisket. If you want to bulk it up with some ordinary stewing meat, do, but using the sinewy cuts introduces collagen to your mix, which significantly affects the flavour and texture of your results.

The other thing is cooking time. A pressure cooker will negate this, as it uses pressure to simulate cooking time passing, but without one you can use a slow cooker, a Wonderbag or a simple casserole or cooking pot in a low oven (150C or so) or a low hob for a couple of hours. My average for a beef stew is 2-3 hours slowly bubbling on the stove, or between 8-10 hours in the slow cooker. This helps the collagen melt into the stew, leaving behind a lovely, silky textured sauce, and soft, fall apart meat.

If you don't have the time for that, and want a quick, weeknight curry, go for the leaner cuts of meat, but then just sear it, make your sauce, and mixed the chopped, seared meat (like ostrich or chicken breast) in 10 minutes before serving, to finish cooking. Don't leave it in as the sauce cooks, as those leaner cuts will not benefit from long cooking times.

Hope that helps!

Sigrid

Have you tried cooking your meat in a pressure cooker? cooks in quarter of the time, and at just the right texture...I cant live without my pressure cooker :) if you don't have a pressure cooker, try the wonder bag,sold on yuppiechef, takes longer to cook, but meat comes out lovely :)